Day: 31 July 2016

Wellbeing is more important than checking your dating app

Woman looks at her phone wondering

I was reading no bad dates just good stories and read the point about Bumble.

Bumble is full of feminists?

And this is a problem why? Sweet Jesus, a dating app that puts women in the driving seat, whatever next? Quick guys, delete it – don’t let the vagina army overthrow your seat in power.

I liked the concept of Bumble, love to meet more female feminists being one myself and know there was a massive backlash from the manosphere (read with caution!). But it should be a dating site I’m regularly on.. but I’m not?

When I first signed up it was early and there was little people from around Manchester on it. Then suddenly there was a ton of supermodel type women showing up. Most men would have loved it. But something didn’t seem right, I couldn’t tell for sure but it felt like quite a lot might be fake (from previous experiences and what I’ve read, it certainly seemed possible)?

Fake profiles is a quick way to keep people on the site and interested, or keep them using the app?

Fake match profiles

That was off-putting but then they changed the terms so if a woman messaged a man, had 24 hours to reply. Encouraging/forcing you to look everyday at least. This for me is not the habit I can not see a positive outcome from. I understand some of the reasoning but it feels unsustainable, at least to my mind? I check my dating profile only once or twice a month (to be fair this is very low), unless I’m chatting with a woman or planning a date of course. I have to question the benefit to the people using Bumble vs their ability to tell investers they have a large number of uniques per day?

I have to say checking your dating app everyday can not be good for your wellbeing; be it bumble, okcupid, tinder, grindr, hinge, pof, etc. It leads to cognitive burnout, which is something a lot of regular daters talk about in different terms. This is why the idea of a online dating break is a real thing.

Cognitive burn-out

Regardless, I’m willing to give it another try, but frankly if it’s not a big improvement I’m not going back; another good idea executed badly in faviour of business? Maybe its time for total distruption as mentioned previously?

Using Google translate on a date?

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Yakkapp or rather Martin tweed me a link to someone’s first date which involved a language translator app.

Blind date in Korea, spoke no English. We only talked w/ translator apps. Something he wrote translated to, “I drink pain.” #WorstFirstDate

I dont know the ins and out of the date or the setup, but Lindsey Nothstine’s tweet got me thinking about my experiences of Google translate in Tokyo and would that work in a dating scenario? Skype’s translation feature is pretty epic but certainly breaks the flow of conversations.

It might not be perfect but like I said about Google translate perviously. It opens up the world to you like the man (trainer) I was talking to in the maid cafe. There was no way he could wonder up mount Fuji looking for Pokemon’s scenes (how ironic following Pokemon go’s launch) alone without being able to speak or understand Japanese.

If Google translate can help you to go new places, meet new people or even date them; it can’t be that bad surely…?

File this under pushing your boundaries…?

Update…

Forgot to add that in the movie Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong (which is pretty much Lost in Translation for Hong Kong and well worth watching – Cheers to Nico for the recommendation).

There is a scene when they discuss meeting people in other countries and using Google translate to communicate. They also talk about going on a first date with 3 spaces, two for the couple and one for the translater.