The birds and the bees bring Bumble to its knees. I refer to the Bumble dating app, which launched a decade ago, described as the feminist version of Tinder — but maybe it should have been called Hinder, because that's what these feminists did to women trying to meet men.
Bumble's big innovation was that only female users could make the first move to contact a potential match. That way, their inboxes weren't full of messages from losers or creeps or all of the above.
But that was Bumble's brand: The women get to ask, and the men don't. Until now, after 10 years, Bumble is waving the white flag and letting men initiate the conversation.
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Turns out, putting women in the driver's seat for dating apps was as bad as putting them in the driver's seat for driving.
ANNOUNCER: A sexist would say!
Woman saw what it's like for men on the dating market and found it too hard to do what men had to do for ages: Make the first move. So they ran away in horror like they were handed the bill for dinner. So the app finally gave in to the inevitable: Allowing men to initiate conversations with women.
Now, women can add a question to their profiles for men to respond to. And for lesbian and non-binary users, there's directions to the closest Home Depot. Here's how Bumble describes this amazing innovation of letting men ask women out, which we used to call human nature: "Our new feature, Opening Moves, lets women choose a question that's sent to all matches. Just choose your Opening Move, sit back, and let someone else do the work to get the good chat going."
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You know, in bars we used to call that having a wingman. You know, the guy who's so awkward and embarrassing, he makes anyone look good. My wingman used to say, "Hey Greg, I think you left your trophy for best quads in your helicopter." You know, a wingman was like Goose in "Top Gun." As long as you make me look good, then I don't care if you die in the ocean.
The app adds: "So if you're done with thinking of what to say — we get it. Opening Moves means less agonizing over what to say and more getting to the good chats faster."
See, it's not so easy, my little chickadees, having to think on your feet, be charming and witty. And we had to do it to your face after six shots of Jagermeister! But with Bumble, a woman can now put a question in her profile like: What's your dream vacation? Who's your favorite singer? Or who will feed all my cats when I die alone?
Then any fella out there can talk. Because, as you know, there's nothing us guys enjoy more than small talk for hours on end. But it gives men a chance who are physically repulsive to women, but can still come up with a good line or two.
So why is Bumble doing this after 10 long years? Well, their stock price has plummeted 86% and the company just fired one-third of their employees. Turns out, you can't get laid on Bumble, but you can get laid off.
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As it turns out, being expected to make the first move all the time isn't much fun, even on a laptop. Try it face-to-face in real life, in a bar with six of your friends watching and ready to bust your b**** or ovaries the rest of the night, because he or she turned you away like you were the Elephant Man with halitosis. I know.
Suddenly, women got a taste of making that scary first move and the sting of rejection. Making the first move is the hardest thing you can do because you faced rejection almost nine out of 10 times. It's like when Kat applies for a credit card. But yet we're expected to do it, and that's good because it builds muscles.
The ones you don't see, the muscles of personality, humor, charm, charisma, what we call the Axis of Gutfeld. I worry, however, that dating apps have caused those muscles to go slack.
People online, they judge each other superficially on looks and wealth. So now, even an average-looking guy misses out on training those other muscles that make him better than a dumb, but handsome, jock.
Here are the attributes the top 10% of men who get all the action on the apps. They're usually over 6 feet tall, wealthy, good-looking. No wonder everyone else with a Y chromosome says why bother?
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Now, that has happened to women on Bumble. Men only contact a small percentage of women, leaving out others because it's now based on looks. So only a few women get the most requests. Perhaps there should be a new dating app called The Rest of Us.
An unattractive man like, say, Randi Weingarten, could be the spokesman. But as men explore what it's like to be women in sports, dressing rooms and beer commercials, women are learning what it's like to man up. And in both cases, the results aren't good for anyone.
See, the internet can do a lot of amazing things, but it can't change human nature. An app stripped away what would have been helpful for both sexes. The women of Bumble have learned that today's gender fantasies have little impact on what makes relationships work, or even how they begin.
Social engineering can't change facts about human courtship. Men make the first move because they need to. Women don't.
We're essentially hunters, and women wait and then discriminate. It's hard for them, but it's hard for us, too. But you take that away, and you're left with very lonely people on both sides, which leaves men with porn and women with cats.
