The Bumble Fumble Shows How Dating Apps Misunderstand Their Users
Words: Lauren O’Neill, additional research by Sihaam Naik
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In recent weeks, the dating app Bumble has found itself in hot water online because of a really stupid ad campaign. As part of a rebrand – and in order to introduce a fundamental change in the app’s workings, whereby for heterosexual daters, men are now able to initiate conversation with women, when previously it was only woman-identifying users who could start a chat – the company mounted a huge marketing push. This took aim at the idea that women, dissatisfied with dating apps, were choosing to take “vows of celibacy”.
The campaign struck a weird note – “You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer” their screamingly massive billboards in cities like Los Angeles and New York read – which bothered different people for different reasons. Firstly, Bumble has users who are happily celibate, who felt misunderstood and undermined. Secondly, there was something accusatory in the messaging: lots of women who date men in particular report dissatisfaction with their experiences on dating apps, and the Bumble campaign seemed, in some way, to blame them for it (even though these frustrations can stem from everything ranging from underwhelming dates and sex, to dangerous behaviour from men that women meet up with). The brand has since apologised for the billboards, and taken them down.
What’s interesting about this whole debacle is that while Bumble’s tone of voice felt off, they probably were actually onto something when they identified that women were fatigued with dating apps. How could you not be? They’re an endless carousel of putting yourself up for judgement, judging others, and compartmentalising some of the most significant and emotionally loaded interactions in our lives. They are, ultimately, designed to keep us on the treadmill.
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Like a lot of other single women living in major cities, I am pretty well placed to talk about dating apps. I’ve used them on and off throughout my adult life, been on countless Hinge, Bumble, Tinder and Feeld dates, had nightmare dates, and had great dates. They’ve also brought me a lot of happiness: two people I consider to be close friends, who have intimate knowledge of the batshit inner workings of my life and brain, are people I know because of dating apps.
Despite these important “connections”, however, something that has never actually emerged through my use of any dating app, is an actual ongoing romantic relationship. Obviously, as is the case for most, the apps have yielded situationships here and there, but that’s kind of it. Of course, I’ve not always been after the whole nine yards, but I’d imagine that at some point, a lot of the people on these apps are using them because they are seeking something beyond small talk over text, a couple of pints in the pub, and a silent agreement never to talk again.
What I’m saying is that if the purpose of using a dating app is to get dates, then they work, pretty much: it is, for most people, easy enough to get chatting to someone and arrange to meet up if you so wish. But everyone who uses them knows that this isn’t really what they’re on them for. A date is a means to an end – it’s an opportunity to see whether the person you’re meeting is someone with whom you might want to build something, whether emotional, sexual, or otherwise, via which you might both achieve some level of fulfilment.
As such, by design, the apps are exploitative – not just for women but for everyone. They take the very human, very tender desire for companionship and ultimately for love, and plunder them for profit. Hinge, for example, brands itself as the app that is “designed to be deleted”, but it shows users who pay a premium to more potential matches. Feeld only lets you see the other people who have “liked” your profile if you pay, as does Bumble. The apps, ultimately, are businesses, and when you start to see them that way, it feels inevitable that they’d be inherently unsatisfying.
Of course there are people who meet their partners and have fulfilling relationships via the apps – I have lots of friends for whom this is true – but it seems like bad business, if nothing else, to side-eye the frustrated users who haven’t had this experience, in the way that Bumble’s botched marketing campaign did. Dating is a sensitive part of life at the best of times – and what Bumble’s misunderstanding of its audience has proven most of all is the dissonance between the addictive gamification that dating apps are offering their users, and the simple human connection that their users are actually seeking.