Review of BUMBLE: the Art of Not Being Alone.

this video is not really directly about
dating or romance but it is in large part or a view of a dating amp it may seem like just yesterday that I had long format discussions on these topics on this channel but it was actually a year and a half ago I'm reminded this in part because literally yesterday I was talking to the illustrious youtuber asked herself also known as Isaac we're starting to ask yourself abut exactly these themes that a year and a half ago I discussed in this channel with tofu goddess I think my interviews that tofu goddess are some of the best videos on this channel some of the best podcasts have ever done etc I wish that you guys would send her a message on Twitter asking her to come back on the channel so I'm gonna give her Twitter link below this video go over there send her a message saying hey you remember the last time she came on how about let CL and I'd love to have Rebecca on talk about those issues partly because I know in the last year and a half she and I both have been through a whole lot of living a lot of I don't know life-changing experiences and if you interesting to see her perspective on some of the same issues I'd also like to press on some other issues talking about mmm politics education policy future veganism in Canada what we're gonna do about it that's not what this video is about this video is about bumble and before I get into the app bumble and whether or not it's possible to use this or any app for friendship friendship rather than romance the contrast between those two and how it all breaks down the digital era let me just say back when I was married I'm now divorced but many many years ago when I was a married man I remember sitting down with my wife and with fascination using one of the dating websites this wasn't an app for a mobile phone but a website using it just to look up demographic questions like I was studying Chinese so you start by using this website like like a database and search okay what kind of people living within 100 kilometers of me or 100 miles whatever living within a certain radius how many people are studying Chinese so you put in you be able to put in this criterion like I'm looking for someone who is studying Chinese um and then you know you'd get this kind of list to scroll through now of course it's not like real social science research but in some ways I mean it's you know it's just as revelatory it's just as informative as as tweive real social science research um you'd be able to put in something like okay how many he could be in another part of the world to like I've read about on the internet vaguely the fact that veganism was really big in Israel so be able to put in like you know but do a worldwide search for you know vegans living in Israel and then some other criterion and the dating web so it would give you these profiles that would give you you know a reasonably deep snapshot of the type of people who were vegan living in Israel the type of people who were vegan and learning Chinese and currently enrolled in a ph.d program the type of people who happen to live in California or Saskatchewan Canada or some of the things anyways so just remember in the website I'm thinking of it was primarily designed and created for for romance for people to find members the opposite sex before being blonde what these these websites weren't made for same-sex or bisexual romance I think all of them have tried to you know have some kind of drop-down menu that lets lets those buckets also use them but it's not what they're designing created for and then to some extent you can declare that you're only looking for friends or that you're already in a relationship that you're not trying to use the website in that way and still have access to it and maybe kind of sort of find someone who's willing to have a cup of coffee with you in my opinion it's part of one making this video now it's really interesting to reflect on why these same websites don't work well this way and for me it's also like a meditation on philosophical questions of why it's so hard for I don't know adults to make new friends after they finished high school everything is a big question for english-speaking Western civilization can of the United States England from what I hear also Australia I've never lived in Australia but yeah it's a puzzle and it's a puzzle you put together out of many jagged pieces with many rough edges some of which came into very sharp contest for me when I downloaded the app Bumble right yeah I think so um bumble and and I did so because I read that it doesn't just do dating allegedly also does friendship its first foremost let's just talk about the revenue-generating model for applications and websites like bump bumble these are so-called matchmaking websites but what they do is is radically different from what a matchmaker would do historically right so to give you an example of how how bumble makes its money you know sorry a matchmaker five hundred years ago would be someone you would pay or maybe just a member of your community have some kind of relation to it could be an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent so there may not be money involved but someone who allegedly with your best interests in heart would go out and seek a suitable match for you and recommend them and introduce you to them or introduce you to their parents to some kind of formal process right these websites in these applications don't make introductions they mostly make their money through concealment of nearly random matches and suggestions right so the way bumble operates one of its principles and again this is why trying to market romance in the Internet is so different from trying to market friendship if someone sees your advertisement you're listening and likes you they like the look of youth alike description you they have a 24 hour window of time to write to you and start the connection going now you could say they're doing this just to create excitement they're actually doing to generate revenue the reality is that bumble will give you a little warning and say oh you're running out of time to make this connection so why don't you just pay a small fee and you can get an extra 24 hours or extra week something like this it'll last the time and who is this person you're paying to have the opportunity to talk to you don't know you you've never talked to them by definition here but also it's not as if the application is recommending this person is suitable for you it's almost at random but through concealment and they're inviting you to let your imagination run wild and think this is some great opportunity for you they're trying to nudge you into basically irrational economic behavior because what you're paying for in that circumstance let's pay it let's face it you're paying for nothing this is like [ __ ] where it's like crippled software there's no reason for this opportunity to disappear after 24 hours except that they want to ransom the opportunity for you to pay for it for more time now in a romantic context in the context of people maybe seeking out the person they're gonna get married to and raise kids with you can nevertheless sympathize with that irrational economic behavior but if talking about friendship what friendship then this just becomes farcical and the whole structure of the structure and even symbolism gonna get into what I mean by zone there the semiotic of this situation of exchanging photographs in the internet and trying to spark up some kind of relationship it becomes downright laughable when they shift from the category of marketing romance to do marketing friendship um but in terms of economics I just want to emphasize that what they're mostly using to entice the money out of your wallet is concealment as having a kind of exotic veil of inscrutability separating you from these unknown theoretically great matches that you that you could be making right now I downloaded this app today because I read on the internet a very brief statement that it's not just for dating it's also for friendship and there was some kind of separate mode like somehow the app worked differently if you were seeking friendship rather than seeking love the sex etc romance it so that already was a little bit interesting to me because the one other website I knew from years ago back when I was married it did have an option to say that you weren't seeking romance or an opportunity that you were only seeking friendship but if we're being honest that was really just like turning the only intensity on a dating app that was really just like saying hey I don't have time to date or spark up new romances now it didn't change the mode it didn't change the way the website worked so you were still you know in theory being introduced to new by all members the opposite sex unless you were using it as a gay or bisexual person and then again to the behavior website doesn't change that much so with bumble specifically part of the veil of inscrutability part of this you know exotic dis tan she ation it creates between the people it's allegedly connecting is precisely that when in heterosexual relationships only women can initiate conversations with men now this solves a problem I think other website had what other websites have which is just a female fatigue so when I was on the other dating website that I keep alluding to again many years ago women would get in touch with me who had no visible profile and on that website us is hilarious Saudi won't believe it but that website like it gave you a rating for how attractive you were which was based on like an algorithm of how many other people like showed interest in you and I actually got the highest rating so should imagine my competition ma so I actually quite frequently got messages from invisible profiles and those were women who said yeah I'm on this website trying to meet people but they don't want the attention they don't want to be dealing with maybe a hundred messages a day from guys they've no interest in no compatibility so Bumble the side just shut that down by saying okay only fee-only females can initiate a conversation with males now right away you have a question how is this gonna apply to gay people how's this gonna apply to bisexuals and then what they have a separate mechanism like there's a separate column for friendship how is it going to apply to friends right there also questions about how are they gonna make money out of it interesting in itself um what really struck me though the reason why I really want to make this video was the absurdity of taking the the you know the kind of oblong photograph you know compatibility matching process and applying it to friendship instead of romance and for me even as using this for a few minutes it really forced me to reflect on like what is the meaning of adult friendship in contrast to romance so like I turn this thing on and I I click on friend mode so friend will they call BFF best best friends forever okay now first surprise only men so like right away I'm just stunned like what is the assumption is the assumption that because of a heterosexual man all of my friends would be heterosexual man and not gay men gay women straight women or bisexuals of either gender or let's face it guys this is 2018 there are some other categories here for transgender whatever just y know so if I wanted to make friends with heterosexual women I would have to go into the the other part of yet the romance and dating part and declare that I'm not available I'd have to be dating people as someone already in relation who's not available in order to meet women as friends it's a friend part of the website is only for heterosexual men meeting other her desertion so this is this is the first thing the second thing is Bill's deeply into Bumble and yeah I did like two minutes of research on this Bumble is different from some other dating websites or apps in that it will only recommend romantic partners to you who are very closely similar to you in age so for me I'm 39 so you looking at matches who are just like 37 38 39 okay and this has applied also to friendship now I have had friends heterosexual male friends who were way past retirement age when I was in my 20s and those were friendships I learned a lot from now it's interesting those friendships didn't last basically didn't last when I relocated when I moved out of the city I was living in I lost those friends okay but I mean that's also partly a generational thing people from that generation are not as good at keeping a relation going by email or Skype or something right but be that as it may I have hand friendships that that were important in my life with other men who were much older than me it's almost needless to say I've had friendships of people also who were significantly younger than me now look I could get into a discourse here all friendship is asymmetrical I've actually at videos starting but in the past I had some really good conversations the guy named Mohammed his internet name is Mohammed Socrates one in Europe brilliant young man strikingly brilliant astoundingly well-read a lot of conversations about history and politics and to some extent she art also because we went to a couple museums together and it would have never met him it wasn't the Internet but he is much younger than me so sure in talking about certain topics you know I behave a little bit differently with him than I would with someone who's the same age in you or someone who's decades older than me it's true but it is possible for me to be a friend with somebody who's much younger than me or somebody much older than me I've also already implicitly said I could be friends with someone who's male or female or some of those other categories that have been alluded to for me actually a lot of my friends have been women who were bisexual more often than lesbian but you know like yeah I can be friends to the woman where there is no you know there is no issue of like seething repressed attraction or I think well that's you know that that's out of the question that's not it's not at the table um but I just saving this 2018 why would you assume this is only men seeking men and why is it only men of the same age the most absurd thing knows when you're looking at this image so this oblong self-portrait and there were all these symbols that have such a clear value in the context of dating in the context of seeking out love or romance like you know if there's a guy with his boat on the coast on vacation like you know in a dating context what this means the boat is not just a boat the boat says I have achieved a certain level of financial success or independence I don't live at home with my parents anymore I have some kind of job I'm you know I like it it suggests that he's not an alcoholic and not a drug addict and isn't someone who spends all this time in nightclubs downtown that he simply spends more time those there were all of these qualities that are symbolized in him choosing to present you with an image of him standing next to a boat that he allegedly owns maybe just rented it whatever the story is um and I think all of us understand is there to within our own culture within our own language group we understand what those symbols mean on a dating website why you would represent yourself literally holding certain objects in the same way that like a 16th century painted portrait will show someone holding certain objects riding on their horse wearing their armor holding you know religious are objects and that certain weapons and so on there will be a direct symbolic representation of a person's historical political and economic station in the world in a portrait that's painted of them in creating the selfie for the dating website hilariously in 2018 we really are doing the same but it's almost always symbolically suggestively hinting at the qualities that will make you a reliable parent even if you're a child free person even if you're an antenatal swear even for someone if you're somebody never wants to have kids still normally what you're trying to get at is you know it's suggesting your level of education your level of employment your level of well sure those things are there but very often look I could say it's just at my age but also I think it's probably even more intense for people in their 20s like people who are younger a lot of the time what they're showing in those photographs is I don't live with my parents anymore like you know if you if you date me I'm not in my parents basement I'm not this I'm not that whether it's showing that they have their own apartment or that they have their own car or whatever it is symbolically their station in the world which of course very much in your 20s is gonna be called into question and their potential for earnings in the future their potential to be a good partner a good mate ultimately a good parent is being displayed through a series of simple gestures in that in that that one selfie that one that one image but then the absurdity is for me if I'm on this website looking for friendship I saw I'm a heterosexual man I would never be friends with another man because he owns a boat I might be his friend despite the fact that he wants a boat you know it's another one you know I'm vegan it's not what this video is about but I am vegan and so many of these images whether it's a man or a woman will show them like beasting a turkey show them cooking something show them presenting to you some elaborate meal they prepared and again all of this is hinting at whether they're conscious of it or not that they would make a good parent that they're a responsible person they know how to they know how to clean an oven they don't want to prepare a complex meal they know what to perform certain cultural rituals they know how to take responsibility that would be involved in sharing an apartment together sharing your life together possibly raising a kid together right all being symbolized and displayed for you in this in this snapshot I might be friends with somebody who knows how to roast a turkey like someone who's showing this kind of image despite the fact that they roasted turkey I might be friends someone who owns an expensive car or who goes mountain climbing that's another thing people show off who goes on a beach vacation I might be friends of them despite these things but it's just laugh out loud hilarious to be holding the phone and looking at this amp which is again extensively not a dating app but a friendship app and to imagine that I'm gonna try to get in touch with this guy because of what's being displayed in these in these pictures and really the only difference between these pictures and what you get in the straight-up romantic dating side of the same application is that very often the guys do show themselves with their girlfriend or with their wife you know whatever their their situation might be and again even that there's the same absurdity so if I become friends with a guy would it be because he has a wife or because he has a girl would like it just doesn't make sense you've got this same set of cultural cues that are in a sense boasting its declaring these your accomplishments this is your social status and now you're gonna initiate a friendship so look guys this experience today it only happened today that I signed I found this out and sign up for bumble and click through these these screens and you know you have to go through your process you put up a description of yourself and some photos of yourself and then you see how this works and you realize that they've they've segregated it by gender that that for them for the owners of bumble corporation the difference between friendship and romance is that only in the friendship category you only talk to man whereas I would have thought if you talk to men and women equally no apparently not um oh the internet went through a kind of transitional stage where people were primarily known by their written words like maybe that ended around 1999 but I can remember in the early days the internet where people would first meet you and get to know you by the written word by your comments but you know in a forum or articles you've written things you presented in terms of your ideas your research what you cared about and they really knew you as black and white letters first and maybe later they got in touch to you by email and saw your photograph and the funny thing is course from that era all kinds of crazy romances I mean there are children being born and raised there probably children have grown into adults from that early era of the internet and of people reading by their words thoughts values by their principles you know first and foremost and then very quickly of course the internet slid the other way where people were meeting for the first time because of what they look like maybe because their charisma what they sound like how they talk but maybe indeed because of things they owned because of images of them with the car they owned the boat they owned about the lifestyle they lead being put in the internet very rapidly you know that that peculiar character the internet had of bringing together unlikely couples yeah I guess I'm thinking romantic couples but sure also unlikely friends around the world and even stars in the same city people you would have never met otherwise if you weren't on that board discussing how you love African drumming music and it turns out there's someone a few blocks away who also likes the same kind of African German music and then you meet at a coffee shop you meet at a Tim Hortons or whatever and then it can start a friendship to last the rest of your life that was really what made the internet kind of exciting as a new technology I don't know 1992-1998 or something like that you know and you know so quickly that slipped away and now we have this invidious division there are a few places where people still express themselves in text only but they are primarily Anonymous places like red places like the YouTube comments you know below this video and then there were places where you know your face your image your photograph the things you own are very much you know first and foremost what gets presented what gets received what represents you and if this app on bumble um to me as I say it was it was just a laugh out loud funny you know reflection on what is friendship and why is the internet so bad today in 2018 and helping grown adults make new friends but for me it's it's really something to reflect on okay guys that's fine that's my product review for bumble with the the BFF tab or column then you can click on I would say that it is an absolute failure and I think that the people at bumble have to go back to the drawing board and think again very fundamentally about because they have a third column also that you're looking for work contacts that you're looking for colleagues for for networking in this professional and career oriented sense I think they have to start again and really think about what are the criteria whereby we first recognize someone as a potential friend and how we get into the first stages of getting to know and trust someone when it's not just a matter of giving them a chance or rejecting up on faces of their appearance who could care for a friend when this is not full minutes you know why sorry how ugly would someone have to be for you to not be friends with them this is just friendship I mean it's it's ludicrous you know sorry it's just it's just bizarre to me they thought they could take you know kind of the same jar used for marketing romance on the internet and pour out the contents and put in put in new concept new new user-generated content the same container would work just fine for friendship but instead what we have with bumble is a is a bazaar or lesson and just how fundamentally different and record your reconcilable those two things are okay guys below this video I'll put the link to the Twitter of from tofu goddess and I'll also put in the link to those old videos that I did now about a year and a half ago talking about romance in the 21st century I think some of the best content in this channel