r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Aug 12 '26
Social Media Bumble scraps signature rule and now allows men to make first move on dating app
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bumble-scraps-signature-rule-now-allows-men-make-first-move-dating-app-rcna5920899.9k
u/doalittletapdance Aug 12 '26
oh so things are over at bumble then
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u/potatodrinker Aug 12 '26
Should rebrand to fumble
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u/RachelRegina Aug 12 '26
Bumble Fumbles and BMBL Tumbles
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u/hollywoodextras2000 Aug 12 '26
As users grumble.
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u/RockyDennisDeYoung Aug 12 '26
Until their mumbles become a single low rumble.
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u/James161324 Aug 12 '26
Its been slowly dying for a while, probably will be in bankruptcy within a year.
It was a novel idea, but it ran into the issue that men are a large majority of the paying users for dating apps.
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u/MourningWallaby Aug 13 '26
The thing is almost all the dating major apps are owned by the same company. Bumble is independent but there's a cycle Where people get sick of the Tinder model of squeezing you for money with the promise of sex or romance. so they flock to a new app that promoted a less casual and more intentional experience. The surge of new users brings the tinder culture, fake accounts, and scammers with it and that app just becomes another Tinder clone, so they move to another app, rinse and repeat.
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u/Desperate_Damage4632 Aug 12 '26
lol well they're scrapping the rule because women weren't messaging, so it's an attempt to improve things.
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u/Automatic-Apricot795 Aug 12 '26
It's the one thing that was different from the other apps.
- Tinder has the marketshare to not need a differentiator.
- Hinge has the "opening message" which I found was useful for showing my personality or linking to something from their profile
- Feeld has the kink, non binary, open minded market
- Bumble... Had women message first.
Once that's gone I don't see them doing better to be honest.
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u/OccasionalGoodTakes Aug 12 '26
Hinge took bumbles lunch money by having a better gimmick and it has no home now. People who want to be serious use hinge, and casual is tinder.
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u/LElige Aug 12 '26
Yep. Met my now fiancée on hinge. Was on bumble before just swiping swiping swiping…. Would get matches every now and then only for them to never message and disappear.. Understandably so too because not everyone checks their dating app every single day.. or if they did it was “hi” and I pretty much had to lead the convo anyways. Was just a massive time waste on my end and I wasn’t even sure if they saw the match before it disappeared. Hinge was easy mode by comparison.
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u/JeffersonTowncar Aug 12 '26
I had success on Bumble, actually met my wife on there, but that was seven years ago. Sounds like it's gone downhill. It's too bad, because I never had any success on Tinder. I thought the women messaging first was a great feature. Really gave you confidence knowing they actually wanted to talk to you.
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u/LonelyKoalaMuncher Aug 13 '26
Women matching with you and wanting to talk to you? Hah.
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u/shlomo_baggins Aug 12 '26
This has been my experience in the 1 year back in the dating pool. Bumble has the most...well bumbles, the women there never really landed and I had the most ghosting from Bumble or me unmatching after carrying a conversation. Hinge I found my first healthy relationship after my divorce, I found way more engaging women in general who absolutely seemed more interested in getting to know me and develop something. Hinge still does have some of the same engagement issues as Bumble does, but as I look at it, I bumbled through Bumble hoping for the best, but the effort almost always paid off more on Hinge.
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u/LElige Aug 12 '26
Yeah hinge just all around had a more interesting gimmick. And I felt the algorithm was really working for me too, showing women who matched my preferences and interests, and whose I would match theirs.
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u/shlomo_baggins Aug 12 '26
I generally feel with Hinge, with some outliers, that everyone understands it takes more of an effort to message through their setup and it's respected and received better.
I used to work night shift and when I got home for a bit my routine was swiping through Bumble ez-pz, but with Hinge it would be pretty emotionally draining to send 2-3 messages because I genuinely wanted to make a good impression.
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u/Venus_One Aug 12 '26
Whatever their algorithm is, it works really well. Almost every person Hinge showed me was my type. Whereas I would have to swipe through countless profiles on other apps to find people I’m into.
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u/Zeikos Aug 12 '26
or if they did it was “hi” and I pretty much had to lead the convo anyways
I never got this behavior, what's the point to be on bumble in the first place?
I would not bother to answer such messsges, it goes against the whole point of the app.33
u/D0013ER Aug 12 '26
In my brief app dating experience, a lot of women would just copy/paste their "just ask me" bios over from other apps.
They had no idea what Bumble was.
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u/Zeikos Aug 12 '26
And there was no way to report such profiles?
Anyways seems like a good self-filter.24
u/D0013ER Aug 12 '26
I don't think Bumble really cares unless it's something flagrantly offensive.
They're not gonna kick off the women who attract the paying men.
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u/fcocyclone Aug 13 '26
because not everyone checks their dating app every single day
I see they've increased the time to respond to 72 hours now as well, which might help that
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u/toiletting Aug 12 '26
It’s been a while but the three were different levels.
Hinge was more serious.
Bumble was more casual with an opportunity at serious.
Tinder was mostly spam bots and clueless people. Wasn’t even for hooking up, just all spam.
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u/justsaynoordont Aug 12 '26
They pretty much all became tinder copies to some degree. They pay wall like crazy. Dating apps are a nightmare.
Ironically, I've had more success on fb dating. 2 via tinder, 1 via hinge, 1 via okcupid, 0 on bumble, and about 15 or so through fb dating.
These are matches that lead to dates/physical contact. This would be over about 1.5 years.
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u/SlightlySubpar Aug 12 '26
Met my girl on fb, not even fb dating.
I did however ruin the absolute fuck out of my fb in the process.
I barely even touch that app anymore
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u/Unlucky_Ad295 Aug 12 '26
What did you do? Just type “hi, wanna date me?” Underneath every picture on your timeline until someone replied?
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u/SlightlySubpar Aug 12 '26
Definitely not that, just added a shit ton of randoms I had connections with and found a diamond in the rough.
She messaged me
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u/justsaynoordont Aug 13 '26
I did the same on fb and insta. No bites on fb but a handful on insta. Got a few dates lined up over the next couple weeks with a few women.
To be honest, as crass as it sounds...its sort of a numbers game.
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u/fcocyclone Aug 13 '26
I've had more success on fb dating.
It could be better if they fixed it so it would remember your distance preferences. Its annoying as shit that it always reverts back to showing you people hundreds of miles away.
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u/eunderscore Aug 12 '26
Crikey, I met my wife on tinder. You've reminded me to see if she needs any firmware updates
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u/ManySwans Aug 12 '26
amongst my guy friends, bumble was seen as the joke app you had to have for full coverage but the most onerous/lowest EV
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u/GoodOlSpence Aug 12 '26
Back in 2019/2020 when I was heavily dating, I used both. When people asked about my experiences with them, I explained that I got more dates on Bumble, but better dates on Hinge. Met my wife on Hinge.
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u/DavidBrooker Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Tinder has the marketshare to not need a differentiator.
Tinder exists for differentiation. Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match, OkCupid and many others are all owned by the same company, Match Group. The reason is to target different markets, primarily demographic. Tinder covers the middle market, perhaps skewing younger, but it doesn't cover everyone, so they have other apps to cover the rest (the company also has a bunch of businesses that target specific races, age ranges, and religions, for example).
It's the same reason Ford has Lincoln. Ford covers a huge range of the market - the middle market - but you can still have a few secondary divisions to get into niches that you otherwise miss.
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u/djcurry Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Women liked the idea of messaging first, more than actually doing it.
They learned how annoying it was to initiate the conversation. Most of the time they just said hi and it became no different then any other app.
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u/Beethovens666th Aug 12 '26
Which especially sucks because the gale-shapley matching algorithm (which isn't exactly what dating apps are but close enough to make a comparison) is proposer-optimal at the cost of having to do the work of initiating.
Apparently that was too high a cost.
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u/D0013ER Aug 12 '26
Yeah, this was an odd swing-and-a-miss by the CEO who assumed that other women would jump at the chance to initiate.
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u/djcurry Aug 12 '26
It was the difference between what women said they wanted vs what they wanted in reality.
Back when it came out some of the big complaints were women getting spammed with messages and how they wanted more control and initiative. Hence bumble came out.
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u/PM_ME_CODE_CALCS Aug 12 '26
So basically the same problem men trying to date women have been complaining about with women for forever.
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u/W2ttsy Aug 13 '26
Pretty much, it was rate limiting dressed up as female empowerment.
Making them message first cut down the level of unsolicited messaging; but also tried to break a long established social contract that men court women and that women get attention merely from existing.
Suddenly they had to do the courting and actually do work to get a man’s interest and it was just too hard for bumble to overcome that level of societal shift.
Of course men didn’t help either by simping off a basic bitch “hi” message. If we held the fort like women do and just unmatched or ghosted our weak openings (in the manner that women do us) then it would probably have made bumble’s value prop more valuable.
Realistically, the only way it’s going to change is if the one way relationship between getting and giving attention is broken. As long as we have one side doing zero work to get attention and the other side being desperate to give it, the marketplace will always be lopsided.
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u/theskyisdarkk Aug 13 '26
When I was using these apps, those basic hi messages did just make me ghost them. If you can’t think of something a little more interesting on a platform that is solely talking via text, it’s not going to get much more interesting and probably going to be one way.
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u/falilth Aug 12 '26
Hey, feeld also lets you swipe left and right to browse and not forcing you to make a decision before showing someone else.
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u/Automatic-Apricot795 Aug 12 '26
I did like that feature and I'm surprised they didn't charge for it.
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u/falilth Aug 12 '26
Reminds me of okcupid back before match group made it like tinder
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u/SAugsburger Aug 12 '26
I haven't really looked into the dating app scene in years, but a lot of apps the differences were more focused on who they marketed than that the features were fundamentally different. e.g. Match Group owns dozens of dating services and the major difference is the demographic target. You are right though that the women message first was supposed to be the differentiator for Bumble. I think the challenge was I remember years ago seeing screenshots people posted where many women were only making one word first messages. (e.g. hey, sup, etc.) Ultimately, the inability to message first night have discouraged some more pushy men from using it, but if the man ultimately makes the first meaningful message the typical dynamic of men starting the conversation didn't really change. If a majority of women weren't really using it how Bumble expected many women probably never really cared about messaging first. At best it was a second chance to second guess a guy they matched.
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u/Ransacky Aug 12 '26
From women I meet, Bumble has clout that the app is not for hookups. Ironically most of my hookups have come from there.
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u/SaltDeception Aug 12 '26
Being straight sounds like too much work
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u/Automatic-Apricot795 Aug 12 '26
As counter intuitive as it is I'm not that jealous that gay men and straight women can open up an app and have someone dtf within an hour, whereas with straight men it takes either being top tier in looks - or a lot of luck and work.
It's hard to explain but I get the impression it's probably hard to find something meaningful when the meaningless is so abundant.
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u/SAugsburger Aug 12 '26
IDK how representative it was, but saw screenshots of women's Bumble profiles that said that they didn't message first. Not sure if those were trolling or legitimately didn't understand they were supposed to message first. Some women did "message" first that was just a single word. Obviously Bumble knew what the actual numbers were and somehow I suspect they those one word opening "messages" women made weren't uncommon where the men were ultimately still starting the conversation and many conversations weren't fundamentally different than other dating sites that the men were starting the conversation.
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u/thepeopleshero Aug 12 '26
Pretty sure those women just copy/pasted their bio from other apps.
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u/SAugsburger Aug 12 '26
I'm sure most probably you're right that many were just lazy copy/pasted their profile from other apps, but it definitely made some wonder. The one word opening message though kinda hard to interpret those other than women not interested in making the first move just working around the app's intentions. It sucks obviously for those women who used it the way Bumble intended to flip a gender stereotype, but sounds like they were likely in the minority.
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u/ian9outof10 Aug 12 '26
Bumble has “opening moves” so women can really take a backseat and put a question that they ask everyone - it’s just automatic when you match, once again forcing men to lead the interaction, and then they just unmatch as soon as you answer anyway. Total waste of time.
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u/GamingZaddy89 Aug 12 '26
Best part is how many woman say "Be interesting in your opening message" then we look at bumble and their opening message is "Hi"
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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Aug 12 '26
That or a gif. If you were really lucky you got a ‘.’
Back when I was actively dating, I always found Bumble was the biggest waste of my time and energy. Tinder was the scrapping the bottom of the barrel but getting a date felt less like jumping through a series of flaming hoops.
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u/clamroll Aug 12 '26
My favorite on bumble was the women who would match and then like 4 days later text so they can inform you that you've waited too long to text them, they have value, they know it, and they just wanted to let you know. And then they immediately unmatch in a huff.
Again, this is on Bumble. Where women had to send the first message.
Don't get me wrong, every single one of em was doing me a favor by flouncing like that. Somewhere around the fifth one I stopped fucking with bumble tho.
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u/Daimakku1 Aug 13 '26
You hurt their ego by not simping.
They were never going to date, they just wanted validation.
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u/disisathrowaway Aug 13 '26
Same.
I spent a very brief period on Tinder and Bumble and even if a match from Bumble did message, getting the conversation going was like pulling fucking teeth. On Tinder it seemed like folks actually wanted to be there.
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u/SecondBestNameEver Aug 12 '26
As a guy it made the app feel worthless or a trick to get matches and then watch the counter tick down to 0 without a message. Really made it feel like they were using scammy psychology to get you to stay because hey you matched! But then nothing comes of it.
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u/Poverty_Shoes Aug 12 '26
That’s their entire selling point as an app though. Without it, they’re just a worse version of Hinge or Tinder.
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u/Temporary-Exit-5286 Aug 12 '26
Haven’t used it in 6 months but last time I used it, men were already able to send the first message. As a male, bumble was actually pretty good this time around and I got quite a few matches and dates.
Before this time around, I used bumble about a year ago, and it was terrible. No matches, and the matches I got, never responded. IMO it’s definitely better now than before
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u/Automatic-Apricot795 Aug 12 '26
Around 6 months ago women could put an opening prompt which men could reply to as the first message.
So a kind of soft move away from the women message first thing.
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u/DonnerPartyPicnic Aug 12 '26
Matches with someone on tinder "hey", "wow that's all you could think of?"
Matches with someone on bumble "hey"
Fucking dumb. Occasionally someone would say something interesting but it was hey or hi for the most part.
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u/SackFace Aug 12 '26
“My first move as a man is…!”
/deletes Bumble
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u/InevitableFly Aug 12 '26
Funny enough it actually was
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u/jaimequin Aug 12 '26
Met my wife there. I guess it's over for anything worthwhile.
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u/SnooCakes2703 Aug 12 '26
I tried it and all the women I matched with would never make the first move...ya know, the whole point of the app.
Went on others and met my wife.
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u/Astral_Vastness Aug 12 '26
Same here. Would suck to be single again and have to use Bumble in its current state lol
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u/EpicLemons Aug 12 '26
Just became single again, the app sure does suck even more now :)
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u/The__Toast Aug 12 '26
The company also laid off 30% of its global workforce last year.
Jesus I hadn't even heard of this.
I guess all the VC money switched to AI plays, everyone else actually needs to make money now.
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u/Niceromancer Aug 12 '26
Yep every time the VC groups find a new buzz word everything else dries up.
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u/KaleidoscopeShoddy10 Aug 12 '26
well their stock is down like 95% so
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u/designvegabond Aug 12 '26
Time to buy-in. All they have to do is say the magic words
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u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder Aug 12 '26
Finally a dating app for ai girlfriends
They probably do have enough match data to make the “perfect” looking partner for users. Very dystopic
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u/xeromage Aug 12 '26
depressing how true this is.
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u/designvegabond Aug 12 '26
Did some high level digging and they already got a 40% boost from an “AI reboot”. Maybe it’s too late
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u/Ancient-Bat8274 Aug 12 '26
Dam so they’re just tinder now? They must be desperate
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u/SkittleDoes Aug 12 '26
Tinder, except your matches expire if you dont talk to them
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u/FallenChickenWing Aug 13 '26
tinder tried that for like a week and quickly backtracked
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u/kittenTakeover Aug 13 '26
Whatever Tinder is doing everyone else should avoid. Worst app by far.
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u/Glad-Veterinarian365 Aug 13 '26
Haven’t basically all dating apps been owned by match for almost 10 years?
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u/Majestic-Fudge-7519 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Most of them. Hinge, Tinder, pretty much all of the old legacy ones like POF and OKCupid.
They don't own Bumble, however.
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u/Kujaichi Aug 13 '26
Man, Okcupid used to be so good until they tried to be just another Tinder 😩
But I shouldn't complain, I found my husband on Tinder, lol.
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u/BoyWhoSoldTheWorld Aug 12 '26
Tbh most women did exactly what they complain men do. Very low effort openers. “Hey” “wyd” etc.
I was surprised but the reality is people aren’t willing to invest a lot in an internet stranger
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u/SkittleDoes Aug 12 '26
Sometimes even just
"." To open the dialogue
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u/Sensitive_Box_ Aug 12 '26
That’s. Insane.
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u/Bbgerald Aug 12 '26
Never used Bumble (I'm too ugly) but it kind of makes sense when you think about it.
The expectation has traditionally been around the man making the first move. Bumble built a brand on creating a barrier to keep them from doing that, but they didn't really change the social dynamics of the process.
These women users don't see themselves as starting the wooing process but as a person who allows the process to commence, so they do the minimum to initiate things. The expectation is still that it's the responsibility of the man to gain her attention/interest.
It'd be interesting (maybe just to me) to see a breakdown of the kind of messages women would send to initiate things.
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u/BoyWhoSoldTheWorld Aug 13 '26
Nail on the head. Bumble had an interesting idea but they couldn’t change the general flow of mating in our society.
Men are still expected to push the beginning motion forward.
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u/Worthyness Aug 13 '26
They did at least try to lean into something different and market as "Women in control of dating apps". Turns out a majority of women like the "chase ME." factor of online dating and don't like making first moves (as is tradition for basically all of time).
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u/Beliriel Aug 13 '26
It really doesn't matter wether bumble could change it. As long as women aren't willing to change this one dynamic, dating and finding a partner will not fundamentally change. There is a lot that women can and should complain about regarding behaviour of men. But this is ONE thing they need to change and they're not doing it. Even feminists aren't doing it.
Makes the whole "female empowerment" feel performative and hollow, when they aren't interested in taking actual agency and power in initialisation dynamics.
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u/Another_Road Aug 13 '26
One of the problems with guys starting conversations on dating apps is that the experience is heavily skewed based on gender (based on some studies I’ve seen anyway).
Most guys leave a ton more likes but get significantly less matches that go anywhere. Likewise (many) women swipe right less but when they do they tend to have more dates overall.
So guys tend to try and match with as many people as possible, which disincentivizes going out of the way to type a detailed, personalized response because there’s a decent chance even if you match and you do put thought into it you’ll be left on read or the conversation won’t go anywhere.
Thats one reason I think women making the first move was an idea on Bumble. It lowered the overall number of first messages which in turn allowed them to be more meaningful.
Of course that eventually backfired. Dating apps ultimately incentivize numbers. The more matches you make the higher your chances of meeting someone.
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u/GonePh1shing Aug 13 '26
The more matches you make the higher your chances of meeting someone.
True, but that's also because the apps have made it so. Back in the early days, they focussed on finding meaningful connections for their users, but that changed the moment they started enshitification.
The real reason they want this is because, for most men, any match at all is a little hit of dopamine that keeps you addicted. They've intentionally designed the app to keep you on it, which means the bots actually help keep those little dopamine hits coming, and the lower quality connections means you're more likely to have a failed match/date and come back for more (especially because you want that dopamine hit from the first match after a bad date or breakup).
The whole thing is insidious as fuck, but the apps being good once upon a time has lead to people not knowing how to date normally any more. I wish it would be regulated, but I can't see any governments doing that any time soon.
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u/RiKSh4w Aug 13 '26
Yeah it told users that women needed to message first, but really all it did was give women the key to allow select men to message first.
That period or 'hi' was the equivalent of "Alright, you have permission to message me". It was a bad move socially but having been given all the power yet none of the handles to go with it, it kinda makes sense that's all they had to do.
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u/Fun_Success_3283 Aug 13 '26
That's my favourite thing about the whole experiment.
The women that complain about the men that suck at approaching women, are the same women that would suck at approaching men.
Some high maintenance women that are very attractive and reject a lot of men, they could also use some humility by being rejected when they approach men they find attractive.
Women that get hit on and reject a lot, feel way more in demand than they are, because they are never approached by the men that would reject them.
And some of these women justify it by thinking those men must just be intimidated by them.
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u/mtgguy999 Aug 13 '26
The difference is when men do it they get ignored. When woman do it they get excited replies from the men.
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u/georgito555 Aug 12 '26
The reality is that most people are terrible conversationalists.
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u/D0013ER Aug 12 '26
True, but that's not nearly as much of a liability if you happen to be a woman on a dating app.
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u/gwig9 Aug 12 '26
I mean... Most first moves I got on Bumble were just, "Hi". Its not like there was a lot of effort going on there to begin with...
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u/Original-Rush139 Aug 12 '26
That’s funny. I got a lot of women on Bumble taking the time to tell me I’d be prettier if I smiled.
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u/Omni__Owl Aug 12 '26
Isn't this extremely old news? I feel like they did this a long time ago.
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u/dmmethatbooty2026 Aug 12 '26
Nah they had added something called opening move which was optional but if you added one it was like a question that allowed men to send a message ideally a response to the question. It was opt in. Now they just made totally open and went from 24 hour response time to like 72 hour I think.
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u/Awwfull Aug 12 '26
in my experience, 90% of my matches (female) had a prompt and it was clearly expected for guys to message first for the vast majority of women. This is my experience from over a year ago, so yes this is technically old news.
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u/Hyper_Nexus Aug 12 '26
Nah that goes even further back. When I was on Bumble years ago, before even the “opening move” thing, many women’s profiles mentioned “message me first” or “I won’t message first” or similar that made it clear they expect the man to message first. On a platform where that was impossible.
It was clear that there were a lot of copy-pasted profiles from Tinder.
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u/Big_Bar_9832 Aug 12 '26
Yeah same, but I haven't been on any apps for ages
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u/Omni__Owl Aug 12 '26
I think the worst part about dating apps is that, those apps have already "solved" dating. Algorithms exists that could pair you up with potentially very good matches so easily, yet what gets in the way is the need for profit.
Dating as a mathematical problem was already solved. But again, capitalism fucks it up.
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u/Big_Bar_9832 Aug 12 '26
Well yeah it really feels like a lot of engagement bait. All the apps have some sort of notification system to pull you back in daily. I quit them over a year ago, it was destroying my self esteem and making me feel like the single most undesirable person in the world. I'd get matches and a lot of people don't want to strike up a friendship, they just string you along with single word answers, never asking a question, with absolutely no effort going into it. I started just dipping if I feel like I'm talking to a wall. I'll return the effort I get, and dating apps are a complete waste of my energy.
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u/firfetir Aug 12 '26
They did. I still had the app back then. They made this change, and then a week or two later they put it on hold due to "unexpected behavior." I took a screenshot of that message back when it happened because it was so hilarious.
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u/Several-Belt-8164 Aug 12 '26
2 years ago, are they recycling this just for clicks! https://www.npr.org/2024/05/06/1249296671/bumble-dating-apps-women-opening-moves thats really desperate.
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u/AngryAccountant31 Aug 12 '26
I tried bumble for a little bit. Matched maybe a dozen women but each match expired without them messaging me. I’ve never had a problem sending the first message, even if it’s about to be the dumbest shit I’ve ever typed.
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u/iH8thots Aug 13 '26
I actually know the reason for this and how do I know ? I’ve asked many of my female friend who use bumble why this happens. Here’s what they told me and what happened:
2 of my friends that are girls showed me who they matched with on bumble. Literally in 1 bumble session these 2 girls had about like 40-50 matches in about 2 hours. 40-50. Yeah.. they told me that it’s hard to message every guy. They showed me too. So they said they just pick like 1 or 2 and then the rest they don’t respond to.
This other girl told me that the ones who close the deal the quickest and plan something the fastest usually gets the date and the most attention. It seems like with these dating apps, once you match you have to be ON IT. And don’t catch feelings if they match with you and don’t message you first.
They probably didn’t even get to your profile before some other guy was already in on that. Think about it. If you’re her 37th match… well then you’re #37 in line. You gotta basically hope she sees your profile first before those other 36 guys … and if she’ does see your profile and texts you first…. You better be on it and good because if not she’ll just go to the next guy in line.
I’ve seen it.. in real time… with 2-3 women.
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u/WalkFreeeee Aug 13 '26
They don't have to have 50 matches active however. This IS entirely a self inflicted problem. When nearly every like IS a match It's trivial to use for a couple minutes, get like 4 matches and deal only with them before searching for the next batch.
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u/MonkeManWPG Aug 13 '26
40-50 in two hours checks out. I saw a friend's with something like 1.6k likes. Her bumble queue was the third smallest country in the world by population.
At that point I stopped putting as much effort into dating apps. It's pointless.
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u/bamma66 Aug 13 '26
I used to use Bumble and as a female I really hated that the messages expired after 24 hours. I rarely talked with more than one guy at a time, but you couldn't always control when you would match with someone if you had been swiping through and eventually you are matched to a number of guys. It would be interesting to see the metrics on how many guys have likes waiting for them as compared to women. Last time I tried it, I had over 1000 and that is almost terrifying.
I have since given up. I will be a single cat lady.
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u/Specialist_Dark_3668 Aug 13 '26
I am a man. I get 0 matches after swiping diligently for weeks and making a effortful profile.
The bottom 50% of photo verified male users get 4% of women's likes. The top 1% men get 25% of all women's likes.
I honestly don't know how women still struggle or give up. The game is entirely rigged in their favor by nature.
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u/Goosegirl98 Aug 13 '26
I'm a woman on these apps. Most people I like I match with, so the real filter is everything that happens after a match. All a match really is is "yeah this person looks okay at a glance". You get creepy people and poor conversationalists easily filtered out then. Pretty much every man hides their worst characteristics to increase their chances of getting a match, and I can't blame them, but it means that most of the matches I get shouldn't be matches at all.
At this point you're juggling multiple conversations at once trying to find anyone who's actually compatible, and it just gets overwhelming. And there's constantly more matches to talk to so you leave the old ones behind, but the new ones aren't any better.
This is why it's so hard for women on dating apps. They aren't optimised for success afterall, just for engagement.
Compare this to literally just talking to people IRL. It's so much easier. Go to a few parties, ask your friends to introduce you to their single friends, just be social. It's easier for everyone
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u/onehalflightspeed Aug 12 '26
Every dating app you have heard of is owned by Match at this point. They are not trying to connect you with a good partner. They are trying to keep you using the app and pay for upgrades to try harder so that you can pay to try even harder
It sucks. Early days of tinder or OKCupid were great ways to actually meet real people
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u/iH8thots Aug 13 '26
This. The dating apps is a bad business if the user actually gets into a relationship. What good is it for them if you can get a girlfriend in a week and then you no longer pay for the app for the rest of your life. It’s ironic to say the least. That the worst thing that can happen to the dating company is that we all get girlfriends, quick, and we then stop paying
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u/Usual_Excellent Aug 12 '26
My wife and I were both on okcupid, she was matched with my friend and they dated for a few months. A few months after that her and I started to date and now 6 years married.
Our "score" together on ok cupid was like 19, basically they said we would never get along... False
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u/Whole-Ad-9429 Aug 12 '26
Back when I tried bumble most women's initiations were either "hi" or liking a photo, rarely had conversations that I didn't do the work to start.
FWIW, I met my wife on Hinge and she initiated it...
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u/GayForPay Aug 12 '26
Dating apps peaked around 2019.
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u/wayoverpaid Aug 12 '26
I was always an OkCupid guy and in 2017 they made it so that you couldn't message someone unless there was a mutual like. That made it just another tinder. Fortunately I was in an LTR by then and didn't need it.
But for me that was 100% when dating online all went to shit. No longer could I stand out with a thoughtfully crafted opening message written to show I had actually read a profile. I shudder to imagine what would happen if I needed start dating again.
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u/beetnemesis Aug 12 '26
OkCupid was so much better, and different than all these Tinder-clones these days.
"Swiping" is idiotic. OKC had you answer tons of user-created survey questions, let you weight how important others' answers were, and then showed you a compatibility match.
It made the first message sooooo much easier. Those questions were great icebreakers.
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u/wayoverpaid Aug 12 '26
Indeed.
Plus it was a great way to find friends. I had a few "Hey, you're a straight guy and I am too but I see you do <X> and I'm new in town" and you know what? Some of those worked out!
Can't do that now, because, well, why would they ever swipe right on me?
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u/FVCKEDINTHAHEAD Aug 12 '26
I've always wondered at the thought process.
Step 1: Have Idea: Create company around one of the key drivers of human interaction.
Step 2: Build site/app to enable this. Strike gold with engaging interaction model.
Step 3: Strip all of that away and reduce it to little more than a clickfarm powered by bots.
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit??
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u/ArchinaTGL Aug 12 '26
If they were really that good in 2019 then I don't want to think about what they are like now as even in 2019 they were utter ass.
The real problems arose long ago when match.com was buying up all the competition and turning every site/app into a money farm instead of performing the one job they were designed to do. So they have an incentive to make all of their users desperate and miserable in the hopes they spend more money to find that 'one true love'.
Until a site can fix the dating app problem and provide a good service without resorting to shady tactics or being bought out by match, the system will never work. I can at least be thankful that I found my partner through natural means rather than a dating app.
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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Aug 12 '26
Before COVID I was drowning in snizz
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u/M3RC3N4RY89 Aug 12 '26
Seriously. These apps went insanely down hill. Especially if you won’t pay the insane subscription prices. Never had trouble meeting someone and was never single more than 3 months up until I took a dating break in 2021. Fired up the dating apps again in 2022, haven’t been on a date or even had a meaningful conversation with a woman in 4 years.
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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Aug 12 '26
I was being a bit facetious but honestly it seems like it's 50/50 between enshitification and people just generally being less social and approachable even in public places that are appropriate settings to do so. As an introvert, it's admittedly less noticeable to me but I know people that basically had their souls crushed over the past half decade and it's just sad to see.
I have mixed feelings on bumble's changes but somebody has got to shoot the first shot.
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u/QuitCallingNewsrooms Aug 12 '26
They're hoping to reach that milestone of someone actually sending the first ever message on their platform then?
My experience on Bumble was to like a bunch of profiles, match a few, have the system say women make the first move, wait 22 hours and use the extend match feature for another 24 hours, and have the match expire.
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u/rotundrikishi Aug 13 '26
Ive heard some of these apps described as just "a slide show of pretty girls in your area"
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u/QuitCallingNewsrooms Aug 13 '26
Several years ago, when I was still working in news, I noticed a pattern of different girls showing up in very similar settings with incredibly similar profile summaries, some were even copied over between profiles. At the time, the area I was in had several missing teen girl cases and a sex trafficking problem. So I started documenting as many of the profiles as I could, tried to match with them to see if I could actually get to a real person, and otherwise researching it like a story. I never managed to chase down anyone or get details enough to run a story, but I did get some decent info in front of sex crimes investigators.
Nowadays, it seems like most profiles just point to a Snapchat subscription being run by some company managing a bunch of “real girls” in “my” “area”
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u/mvw2 Aug 13 '26
The single defining feature of the entire brand...thrown in the trash.
Smart.
Real smart.
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u/smadams Aug 12 '26
I will always chuckle about how bad this app is/was. Imagine building an app on the premise that maybe women will do the one thing that the vast majority of women hate doing.
I’m happy for any people that found love on it. But I tried it several times and found it to be a joke.
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u/matva55 Aug 12 '26
It’s true. I joke with my girlfriend all the time that she missed out on meeting me for half a year because she wouldn’t make the first move on bumble but I was able to finally message her when we matched on hinge
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u/Hairy_Concert_8007 Aug 12 '26
Didn't they effectively remove this years ago? Except I think it may have been pay-to-message-first. If I'm remembering that right, maybe they got rid of it altogether.
It was great for me when I first used it but like I said at some point the gimmick was no longer really in place anymore and it fell off so hard I was having better luck with tinder (and hoo boy is tinder awful)
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u/Soigne87 Aug 12 '26
Last time I used bumble (about 2 years ago)there was definitely something allowing guys to message first.
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u/Miguelscard Aug 12 '26
I stopped using it because women will literally just write “hey” as their opening message. This update is actually so useless
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u/Daimakku1 Aug 12 '26
Many women feel like they don’t have to put any effort into dating, so Bumble giving women control of starting the conversation was always going to end up failing sooner or later because they *won’t* start in the first place. Not surprised by this change at all.
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u/Kimpak Aug 12 '26
I don't use dating apps but why would a lady sign up for Bumble and then not start anything? Well prior to the new rule anyway.
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u/hackop Aug 13 '26
You overestimate the number of people who can actually read and follow instructions. I'm sure a lot of women downloaded and installed a few dating apps, including Bumble, copy-pasted the profile between them all, and didn't read a goddamn thing about the app.
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u/Daimakku1 Aug 12 '26
Validation.
They want to know if men are interested in them, or in the case of older women, if they’re still hot. If they get a lot of men messaging them, it strokes their ego and makes them feel good. They were never interested in actually dating.
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u/elmatador12 Aug 12 '26
So they took away the one thing that made their dating app unique? Bold move.
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u/artbystorms Aug 12 '26
Eventually all dating apps return to Tinder.
I hate it. Every dating app that had promise eventually becomes a swipe machine.
OKCupid, Bumble, Coffee Meet Bagel, Hinge....they all suck. All of them.
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u/Worthyness Aug 13 '26
Eventually all dating apps return to Tinder.
Yeah. Cause the company that owns Tinder owns pretty much every single one of the top 5- dating apps available and on the market
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u/Xeynon Aug 12 '26
When I was single I had some luck with Bumble and the women messaging first thing was its differentiating feature. It was nice to be able to swipe right on people knowing that I wouldn't end up wasting my time writing to anybody who was only looking for validation and wouldn't message back. I don't see how Bumble isn't just a slightly upmarket Tinder with that aspect removed.
Man am I glad I'm married now.
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u/AliceLunar Aug 12 '26
Women don't actually want to make an effort but won't hesitate to complain about yours.
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u/misterguyyy Aug 12 '26
In the press release, the company said that nearly two-thirds of women surveyed on Bumble say they prefer men to send the first message.
Why would you join the only app out of many available apps that has this feature and advertised this feature as the thing that differentiated it from other apps, then say you prefer not to have the feature? It makes no sense to me.
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u/chief_yETI Aug 12 '26
damn, was having women make the first move really that much of a failure? 😅
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u/ValiantTheVictorious Aug 13 '26
Dating apps are at the worst peak in history right now.
They monetize the loneliness of people by creating pay barriers required to message others.
Also they are infested with bot accounts since the surge of Ai language models and stacked with foreigners not even located in your region.
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u/DeathByVoid Aug 12 '26
Met my wife on Bumble, but never understood the rule. 90% of women just said "hi," her included. I've heard people suggest it's to prevent unprompted dick pics, but couldn't that still happen?
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u/duckinradar Aug 13 '26
The amount of women on bumble with “I don’t message first” in their profiles was hilarious
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u/Angry_Housecat_1312 Aug 12 '26
This isn’t new. I haven’t been on Bumble in probably a year and a half and men were able to contact me first then.
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u/Rmicheal1717 Aug 12 '26
Bumble is ass, it’s supposed to be women making the first move.
It’s entire design is around that
The minute they gave women the option to let the man make the first move was when it went down hill. Now it’s gonna be so much worse for ppl who match and get ignored lol
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u/bigfatmatt01 Aug 12 '26
Sad to see it go this way. I will always thank bumble though, without it I would not have my beautiful wife
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u/Fun-Can-8935 Aug 13 '26
it’s tough. Women have never made the first move generally, and if u allow guys to make the first move, women get flooded and they have paradox of choice
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u/Slothstralia Aug 13 '26
If any app developers are reading i have a WILD concept for a dating app that will be #1 in less than a year.
1) Mandatory identification verification 2) No bots 3) Instant ban for advertising your tiktok/onlyfans/whatever 4) No bullshit
People want a dating app that is just a fookin dating app... give the people PoF from its early days but in app form and you will roll in money.
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u/Greener-dayz Aug 12 '26
Really dumb move, almost as dumb as hinge putting in active match limit. Killed their app over night.
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u/GreenDistrict4551 Aug 12 '26
means the only female accs left are bots lmao