Ready Datr One Reflection

When the Ready Datr group project was first announced in class, it immediately drew my attention. Online dating has changed so much in the last few years, and apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and The League are just some examples of the variety of options that people have to choose from. The sheer quantity of apps available allows users to really find a specified range of people that share similar interests and characteristics as them. Our group elected Bumble, and we had some really interesting findings as we completed our research on the app.

First of all, as someone that has only used Tinder and not Bumble, one of the main differences between the apps that attracted my interest was the way in which initial contact happened on the Bumble app. For heterosexual couples, women must make the first move. I understand that this is technically considered a feminist move, giving women more control in a relationship, and I’m all for that, but it actually strikes me as un-feminist. My logic behind that stems off a WGS class I took at Emory, where my teacher argued that gay marriage was actually negative for gay couples. The reasoning behind this is that gay couples were forced to adapt to an antiquated institution that not everyone today practices or wants to be a part of. Some gay couples had adapted to not technically being able to be married and had been living together for quite some time. Benefits at Emory were protected in this case because gay marriage wasn’t legal at the time. But after the gay marriage ruling, gay couples that worked at Emory were forced to get married if they wanted to keep those benefits. Again, I am a supporter of gay marriage, but in terms of broadening the realm of possibilities for relationships, marriage is a way in which gay couples are forced to assimilate to heterosexual couples and abide by this way of living. The same is true for Bumble. I believe that by forcing women to initiate the conversation in heterosexual matches, it suggests that women need this additional layer of control, and in turn, implies that women and men are not on the same page when it comes to online dating. I just think that having a difference in the way men and women can communicate implies that women need to be protected in online dating, and that women are not able to handle online dating in the same way men are. This is why I view it as rather un-feminist, as it does not promote equal values for either gender. I also feel like this difference when starting a conversation negates men with the opportunity to show interest, as they only get to talk if they are selected, rather than them having the opportunity to show the woman why they are a good potential match.

However, not all is bad with Bumble. When I asked my friend about whether she preferred Bumble or Tinder, I was intrigued in the answer she gave. And not once did she mention the reason she preferred Bumble was because only she could initiate the conversation but rather, she felt that the people on Bumble were a little more “filtered,” a point which I will discuss as well, but she also mentioned that Bumble was more for serious dates, while Tinder was more of a hookup app. I think this may be due to the time limit expiration, which forces parties in a match to contact each other quickly if they are interested and be engaged in their conversation given the fact that matches are less common and have a shorter lifetime than on Tinder, when anyone you match with can be messaged at any point.

I wanted to briefly reflect on the point my friend made when she said Bumble was more “filtered.” I think by this, she points at the fact that Bumble has more college students, and that their stats are easier to find on the app. With Bumble, you get more people that have credentials than on Tinder, where there is a bigger pool of people. Of course, this isn’t necessarily Bumble’s fault. Bumble’s audience has evolved in this way, but it does make for some ethical concerns, less so about Bumble and more about dating apps in general. As we discussed in class, filtering out people because of a checklist does not allow a natural, organic connection to occur. Quite simply, dating apps aren’t giving us the chance to explore relationships that could potentially be outside our normal comfort zones. This is a problem that Bumble is slightly worse than Tinder at, as they make this checklist even easier to follow and abide by.

Overall, I enjoyed working on this project and I found it to be very relevant to on going issues in the dating world. I think Bumble is a great app and I welcome the changes it brings to the dating app marketplace, but they are not without concerns.