PicoBlog

Today marks 7 weeks as a member of Bumble BFF. Since my first dispatch from Italy, I've matched with roughly two dozen eligible young men as well as a handful of bots and potential sexual predators. Despite this progress, I'm sad to report that I've yet to meet in-person with a real-life man I've matched with through the app.

You might think this makes me unqualified to write about how one makes friends on Bumble—and hey, fair. But in my defense, Bumble BFF for men is just as weird and hard as I suspected it would be. To put it in social psychology terms, men typically communicate shoulder-to-shoulder (whereas women typically communicate face-to-face). In other words, men feel more comfortable interacting with other men around activities—like pickleball or government insurrections. A freeform text-based messaging interface simply isn't conducive to male-on-male interaction, especially if the men are perfect strangers. It goes against our nature, which makes it weird.

This weirdness also makes it hard. When you make the average man attempt friendship without the structure of some kind of activity, he ends up messaging you "hey." What am I supposed to do with "hey"? Ask for his favorite baseball team? What his relationship with his father is like? Say "hey" back? Mind you, I'm currently in France, so most of the men I'm matching with are Europeans. For some reason, I thought this would mean they're more adept at male intimacy. After all, dudes kiss each other on the cheek here just to say hello. But instead I get "hey," and it's very hard to salvage an interaction that starts with "hey." The weirdness of the encounter feels evident, and I end up running out the 24 hour clock to respond.

The difficulty of engaging with men through the app is compounded by the fact that the male friendship pool on Bumble BFF is quite small—at least in my area. I have my filter set to English-speaking men between the ages of 25-38 within 10 kilometers of Nice, France (where my fiancee and I are living for the month of July). On a good day, I'll have 3-4 men to sort through in my queue. I'll usually swipe right on all of them because beggars can't be choosers. This is how you end up with an inbox full of "heys" guys (the notable exception: gay men, who are generally much warmer in their outreach. This is definitely not a coincidence. After all, whose more adept at male intimacy than a gay guy?).

I know the local friendship pool for men is small because, after observing my swiping activity with equal parts curiosity and derision, my fiancee finally caved last week and made her own Bumble BFF profile. Instantly, her queue was full of normal-seeming women eager for some face-to-face interaction. She actually used up her daily swipe limit before she was able to sort through them all. Within a few hours (hours!), she had a date set with two other women staying in Nice for the month who had also met each other through Bumble BFF. Meanwhile, I've been on the app 7 weeks and the most engaging interaction I've had is when some Canadian guy asked if I like hockey (I don't).

This is how I ended up fourth-wheeling it to my fiancee's friend date. After a few initial moments of awkwardness, the trio eased into conversation about their travels, careers, dating, and what life was like back home (Demographic notes: one woman was Canadian, the other South African. Both were in their early 30s, single, traveling solo, and had used Bumble BFF to meet folks while traveling before). We drank a bottle of wine, then ate ice cream, then drank more. I made self-deprecating jokes about being the least popular guy in France. The whole evening was totally normal. Just a couple humans far away from home enjoying eachother’s company. The simplicity with which these women, who barely knew eachother, could come together only served to highlight the futility of my Bumble BFF situation.

The next day, my fiancee and I rented a car and drove to Marseille for the weekend. While Googling things to do, we discovered a bar crawl hosted by a local hostel. I've participated in enough hostel bar crawls to know exactly what you're signing up for: a bunch of nasty alcohol and entry to the types of bars nobody would ever deliberately go to unless they were on a bar crawl. At the same time, a structured activity like a bar crawl would seem to lend itself much better to the male shoulder-to-shoulder interaction style. In fact, I'm not sure there are many activities better for male interaction than traveling from place to place and drinking large quantities of alcohol. It was with this understanding that we decided to sign up for the bar crawl—and by the end of the night, my theory was proven correct.

I probably interfaced with more dudes in the span of those 5 hours than I have since I left for Europe at the beginning of June. We were united in our mission to travel from one bar to the next, and this mission allowed us to lower our guards and let eachother inside (metaphorically speaking). By the end of the night I felt like I had whole group of new friends—most of whom I'll never interact with again outside of Instagram. I say "most" because there was one notable exception: a 35-year-old professional poker player from India. We hit it off in only the way drunk men who just met eachother can. We went out again this week when he visited Nice with his wife.

The bar crawl experience reassured me that it's not me: Bumble BFF is indeed weird and hard. This isn't to say I've stopped trying, if for no other reason than to continue this important journalistic work. In fact, right before I left for Marseille I matched with a dude who’s also a writer. It was the most normal interaction I've had on the app to date. We're meeting up next week.

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