Biology Bedevils Bumble

Mother Nature crashes the dating app’s party

Remember this?

ICYMI, up until a few years ago, glossy spreads, ‘eat healthier’ pamphlets in clinics and brochures at your local organic co-op routinely featured pictures of women exploding with delight over a plate of mesclun greens and a bit of julienned carrot and nobody could explain why. 

Something about this stock imagery trend always left me unsettled. Perhaps it was the rictus smile paired with a dainty salad that put me in mind of Freud’s “vagina dentata” myth. McSweeny’s, apparently, read my mind with a series of Midjourney-generated horrors in a similar vein… 

At some point, around 2011, people began to remark on the fact that these lone female salad lovers came off as clinically insane and ‘woman laughing while eating salad alone’ became a memetic joke no respectable health and lifestyle marketer would ever touch again. 

But how did it become a thing in the first place? If, like me, you grew up on a steady diet of Glamour, Vogue, Elle and Cosmo, you’ll know “eat your veggies” propaganda has always dominated their editorial pages. 

It’s weird how Big Salad managed to hijack women’s glossies, given that the science never added up. A cow’s stomach has four compartments to break down plants, extract nutrients and ferment fibre with bacteria. Human stomachs have one compartment, along with hydrochloric acid, which denatures proteins and makes them more accessible to digestive enzymes. In short, ladies, we were always better off with a steak.

A similar collision with reality is happening inside Bumble, a dating app that allows only women to make the first move. The app’s market value has dropped a precipitous 92 percent since its peak in 2021. Given how promisingly it began, this comes as a bit of a surprise.

When Whitney Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2015, it felt like a stroke of genius. This was a banner year for ‘girlboss’ feminism, which urged women everywhere to unleash their inner ‘shero,’ grab life by the horns and shatter stereotypes, including the privilege of chasing men around the internet. Two years later, #MeToo turbocharged Bumble’s popularity. The idea of women taking the lead was suddenly not just empowering; it was, like Wonder Woman’s magic bracelets, protection against the skeevy creeps who made dating a nightmare. Millions of women swiped right into their happily ever after. Cut to…

**sound of needle scratching across record

At this point, the headlines could write themselves: Bumble stumbles, shares tumble, investors grumble. What happened?

Tech media chalks the decline up to a “perfect storm” of conditions: a digital backlash, a crowded marketplace and a rising preference for real-world connections in the post-lockdown world. I have another theory: girlboss feminism—endlessly propagandised via Vogue and implied all across women’s popular media—has reached a dead-end. Women don’t want to act like men and part of that is they don’t want to make the first move. (Men, with their higher tolerance for risk and all that libido-boosting testosterone, don’t mind at all.)

You may disagree. You may say girlboss feminism is thriving, evidenced by last summer’s blockbuster Barbie. At the very least, you may think that plenty of women make the first move. Don’t take my word for it, take Bumble’s. Earlier this year, due to overwhelming user demand, CEO Lidiane Jones ditched the app’s founding premise and introduced a feature that allows men to initiate a connection. 

Sadly for Bumble, the new feature provided only a temporary boost. Probably because it made Bumble just another swipe app like Tinder and swipe apps are hotbeds of flakes, catfishes, scams and ghosts. The swiping mechanism is also bad for our Stone Age brains, which aren’t adapted to a wide range of mate choices. 

Bumble’s C-suite—which apparently consists mainly of clueless middle-aged one-percenter married women—overlooked the widespread frustrations with dating apps. Instead, with paid subscribership dropping, committed a marketing blunder of ‘Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad’ proportions…  

In other words… we hear you! Dating apps suck and hookup culture leaves you feeling used, objectified, unfulfilled and undervalued. But we need you as bait to retain our paying male customers so do it anyway!

The “celibacy is bad” campaign did not go over well. Following a huge backlash, Bumble quickly removed the billboards and halted the campaign. 

Meanwhile, singletons are abandoning dating apps in droves. It seems GenZ prefers to have relationships mediated offline.

Personally, I’m not shedding any tears. By the grace of God, I’ve been able to sidestep online dating, which has always struck me as a wretched substitute for the rich tapestry of human attraction—a process honed over millennia, where fleeting glances and subtle scents trigger countless physiological responses, all within a split second. This intricate dance of connection is something no algorithm can replicate. 

Sorry Bumble. It’s not (entirely) your fault. Nature always wins.