The girlboss of Bumble has turned the app into a yellow Tinder. Now, women don’t have to make the first move. For years, it was the sole thing making the app “designed for women” and it does not matter now. Whitney Wolfe even before the launch was making big speeches about how she cracked the code to women’s safety in the dating pool. The feminist board of the company was 70 per cent women. Serena Williams and Priyanka Chopra are only two of the many girl-power-coded celebrities who invested in the venture. Now it seems, Wolfe has let up.
There’s really no way to tell if it is in the best interest of romance. For that we will have to do clinical trials of first messages bored people send each other on dating apps. Since that would be tough nut to crack, analysts are looking for answers in the finance part of things. The let-women-approach-men-first performative slash safety feature was hurting the sentiments of men’s rights activists in thousands. They were smacking Wolfe with one lawsuit after another. Somebody must have been paying them or dealing with them at the headquarters. Bumble’s shares have also declined, causing the company to lose millions of dollars. The male audience has deduced a peculiar “fact” from this whole incident— “This proves that women have no game and it was costing Bumble.” Some feminine coaches are also saying, ah, finally, women get to be pursued again, as they were born to be. It all sounds like the High School rhetoric—boys will text first, girls will reply. Bumble also released its own finding that 66 per cent of women users on the app want men to initiate this conversation.
Does that mean that women who left the app looking to be pursued on Hinge and Tinder will be back to Bumble now? Will this so-called disruption help men release all the world class pick up lines they were not able to use? It’s possible. Then what? Surely the unpredictable state of talking stage won’t change.
Also read: Singles are done with dating apps. Welcome to the era of photobooths and pickleball
Not a cakewalk
I’m in the business of hearing dating troubles, I can confirm that it does not depend on who makes the first move and how perfect that text message is. You can shoot all you want, share the most quirky stories of your life. There is also a great possibility that you will come off exactly politically correct for the person. But then it is a tennis match. Not as simple as pre-internet monogamy. Even if you are the god of texting, you can’t make it fun just by yourself. Most players complain that the serve was bad. Hi. hy. Sometimes just a dot to beat the 24-hour deadline on Bumble.
“Women will never tell you what they replied to an off text,” said a man. I totally get him, I generally don’t want to reveal what I say to a man but I can assure you that I never ever in the life of life have sent a vulgar message to someone I don’t know. Not even by mistake. Which is another complaint about the online dating world. It is Wolfe’s whole thing that she will prevent unsolicited graphic messages that were normal in Tinder’s blueprint. The boys’ club she so famously quit. There is a biopic about it. Swiped. Lily James plays Wolfe. The Bumble founder wasn’t consulted on it. So we can hope it was somewhat true. She was on a quest to make an online dating experience less violating toward women. It didn’t matter much that women were still getting scammed in all kinds of ways. What sort of update will block all that from the apps? We will have to wait for Wolfe to lose some shares to think about that.
The raging discourse about that helplessly falls into the world of black and white, man and woman, big one, small, boxes five times a day. The rizzlers are meanwhile keeping at their game. Not to brag, but a lot of them are women.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)