Bumble: Online Dating With a Twist
Online dating can be a nightmare. One profile after another. This person hates cats. You have a cat. Swipe left. This person says they love traveling. You’re pretty sure you like traveling. Swipe right. And now you wait. Either to match with someone or to endlessly keep swiping in pursuit of…what? A date, a hook-up, the love of your life? And if you find them, do you really want to say you met on Tinder?
More people than ever are using dating apps to find potential romantic partners. This presents a huge shift in culture from previous generations who were more likely to date someone they met through mutual friends or in a social setting such as school or work. Now people are able to connect with potential partners who they never would have met otherwise. According to a Washington Post interview with sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, “about 75 percent of the people who meet online had no prior connection. They didn’t have friends in common. The[ir] families didn’t know each other.” Dating apps and services are facilitating connections in totally new ways. But this is also changing how people view dating and their potential partners.
Apps like Tinder and Bumble use a swipe system to sort through profiles. If you’re interested in someone you swipe right and if they also swiped right on you, it’s a match. If you’re not interested in that person, you swipe left. They won’t know you rejected them, you simply won’t match. Easy enough, right? Except it’s hard to get a full picture of someone from a handful of photos and a quick bio. And no matter how many profiles you swipe on, another will pop up. After a while, it starts to feel like you have endless options.
Traditionally, men are supposed to make the first move in romantic/sexual situations. Women are supposed to be recipients of male attention and only respond sexually after an appropriate time period of fending off advances. Women who are forward in pursuing men are seen as slutty or desperate. On most dating apps, men usually send the first message. Many women end up receiving extremely explicit first messages from male matches, despite the fact that they’re basically strangers. On Bumble, however, only women can send the first message. I’m focusing my research on Bumble because of how it upends the traditional gender roles in dating.
Bumble, founded by Whitney Wolfe, was released in 2014. Wolfe was also a co-founder of Tinder before leaving the company. In order to talk to a match, women have to initiate contact within 24 hours of the connection. The match is then able to respond to the conversation. If the woman doesn’t initiate conversation within 24 hours, the match disappears.
Through my fieldwork, I’m investigating how four different women between the ages of 18–25 use Bumble to find potential male romantic partners. Based on interviews and analysis I will find out if women like the ability to message first and how it changes their perceptions of their role in dating culture. I will also determine whether or not these women feel like Bumble is a useful service for them and how they use it in conjunction with other dating apps.
