In Which MERJ Goes on the Apps (the Dating Kind)

 About a month ago, I joined Bumble BFF after reading about it on someone else's blog. I got one bite after many swipes. And we exchanged a few messages.

The thing with Bumble is that you can switch between BFF, Relationship and Business mode. So then I toggled to Relationship mode.

The first day I swiped so many I ran out of swipes. I still don't know what the number of max swipes per day is but I reached it. 

My profile: just a random picture I took the day I joined. It was a too close-up headshot. 

I think I had a food picture and another of the same photo this time with teeth. I wasn't ready to put my best self forward because  Rejection. 

So a swiping I went.

I don't remember too many details but a month later, no one had asked me out. I think maybe one person responded to a chat.

With Bumble, you get notified if someone "likes" you but you have to pay to see who it is. Otherwise, if you match, then you can see. There's been a steady stream of 30-50 likes in my profile with blurred images. It got so ridiculuous that I would try to make out the blurred images and choose those as matches to see if I could get a convo started. 

I was getting pretty good at it. But even those led to nothing. So I think a lot of the guys just swipe yes on everyone in hopes of an ego boost? I don't know. But I messaged everyone I matched with.  You can send them a message and they have 24 hours to respond and then the message expires. I don't know if they automatically drop off or if the guys are removing me as their match.

Either way up until yesterday, I got zero bites. Even on the BFF side! The nerve.

What I don't like about Bumble is that you can't manually choose your location. It uses your device to identify your location. As we all know, I don't live in the best area so my options were mostly ex/current military. A  lot of people taking pics with beers, fish, baseball caps, and camou wear.  There are a lot of redheads on dating apps. I don't know that many red heads in real life. 

I actually didn't realize I was being limited by my geography to the extent I was until I started joining other apps.

Sometime Wed or Thurs, I joined a few more. I started with East Meets East. I think it's only a website, not an app. It's for Asians to find other Asians. Notably - I do think people dating only a certain race even if it is their own race is very racist, but apparently the world is okay with it. 

No bites there. And even fewer options. Almost everyone I was shown was either in California or a handful in New York. I think the site is California based and they say they are really successful, but maybe they were 3 years ago.

Then I joined J-date. It wasn't the harem of beautiful wealthy Jewish men I imagined it would be. Mostly a lot of older guys honestly.  Obviously no bites there.

Then I remembered a colleague actually met and married her beau in 8 months and they met on Hinge. During COVID. I'd seen the commercials. 

I'm not sure why exactly, but Hinge was a game changer. The hits kept coming! Maybe it was the day I joined. Maybe it was my pictures. 

The selection on Hinge is prime. For whatever reason, everyone has really high quality photos not the shoddy dark bathroom mirror photos on Bumble. I would say the demographic on Hinge skews young. Most of the profiles I was shown are in their 20s. I didn't know people in their 20s even existed. Where do they live even? Haha. 

Well everyone on Hinge was so beautiful and seemingly better quality, that it inspired me to find better pictures. I looked through some easily accessible pictures and followed their recommendations on what kinds of pictures to upload. 

I maxed out my "likes" on the first day as well because I didn't really know how the app worked. You only get 8 a day, so you have to be very selective.  Honestly, the first profile I saw was like exactly what I wanted. A pharmacist from my alma mater. He didn't choose me but I was very encouraged. 

I still don't know what I want out of this other than to keep me occupied and to Get Into Things (TM). A couple have asked. Everytime it gets close to someone seeming like they want to ask me out, I find myself wanting to duck and cover. 

I felt so much momentum from my success on Hinge that I got greedy and got on OkCupid. Honestly, Hinge's interface is so clean and simple I was a bit overwhelmed on OkC.

They ask sooo many questions. To me, I'm like who cares. I read an article about a guy who wrote a program to find his match on OkC. He basically figured out the questions that would be answered by people who he would be interested in. So that was kind of my approach. At first I was like I'll answer all the questions. But I think the questions are more quantity vs quality, but maybe that's just me. But even the programmer had to go on 55 dates to find this real life match, and that's with using a program to scan like thousands of profiles first.  So that's a good data point to keep in mind if it takes forever. 

I haven't had any convos or real matches on OkC. Having been on Bumble and Hinge, I find the profiles on OkC kind of long and boring. 

I'm way too much of a "next!" millennial to read all those words. 

I went ahead and added one of my better pictures to my Bumble profile as well. It really hasn't changed who I matched with though.

So far...

I've had one virtual date on Bumble. We just had a video chat and what I liked about Bumble is they offered this like In Date Trivia game to help break the ice. I like that feature alot. 

On Hinge, I got matched with someone almost instantly. It's a like 50 year old granddad. So I was just in it for the attention. He asked me to breakfast. He's not someone I would want a relationship with so it was a non-starter. Plus he sent the request at like 4a for the next day at 7a. Ughhh no, thanks.

But there are about 7 people in queue that have sent me messages and responded at least once. One guy asked me out but I opted for a virtual chat instead. It got racy kinda quick and I didn't mind. I was in one of those moods. 

One quickly asked, "do you like sex?" Gross. He's like maybe early 20s. I haven't had the heart to set my age preferences to only show people in my age range so I've been enjoying the attention. 

I got another virtual date that I missed but will follow-up on. 

I don't really feel comfortable going out in public since I don't follow many of the COVID updates. I don't really know what's safe to do yet. 

So right now, I have some light chats with a handful of people in Hinge and I finally got a few dialogues going on in Bumble. Nothing too promising, but it certainly helped pass the day away today. 

OkCupid is a no. It does the same as Bumble where people like you but you can't see the Likes unless you pay or if you Like them as well.  The one feature I do like about OkCupid is that you can see profiles from overseas. That's something I have been wanting to explore for sure! 

I'm actually a little mentally exhausted from all the swiping and chats but it was such a great way to distract myself! 

I think I'm going to let J Date and East Meets East go since they are not apps and unlikely to yield anything fruitful. Next week, I'll see if I can go ahead and delete those profiles. 

So that's my update. For now I just like the flirty chats but it's too much work to shower and dress and get dolled up for an actual date. And you know.. COVID.

I do think though if they ask you out and you're not willing to go, they move on pretty quickly. And really no one I'm interested in has really messaged me back. So there's that.  But why dwell on that when I have all these other guys trying to get my attention!