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Comment by nikanj | Hacker News Reader

Bumble is an interesting platform. The promise is that women have to message first, luring in men who are frustrated with lack of replies, and women who are frustrated with endless spam.

From what I’ve heard from my friends, 99% of first messages on Bumble are ”hi” or a single emoji, kicking the ball straight back on the men’s side of the field.

I wish dating as a research subject wasn’t so wrapped in weird MRA activism and other politics, there’s a lot of fascinating phenomenoma to be observed.

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IME even a "hi" or a wave emoji is far better than on other platforms in terms of the reply rate I get after sending my own message. It gives the woman a double-filter, yes, but it doesn't take much empathy to see why a bit of an imbalance in that direction might result in a better overall environment given the frequency of bad actors/spammers/dick pics on the male side of the fence.

You have to be quicker/better at texting-style communication, though, compared to something like OK Cupid which was a bit more email-like back when I used it last.

I used Bumble for a while a bit under 3 years ago and id say 85% of my matches fell into the bucket of 'hi' first messages.

I found that if I only responded to people who actually sent me a 'real' first message it was an actually good experience, good conversation and led to easily the majority of my dates.

Even with the immediate passing of control, the premise still works, because women perform the first pass of filtering, giving them an opportunity to preemptively reject the most undesirable of the pool before they have a chance to reach out. It's also an effective tool to fight the sheer volume of spam.

The same kind of invitation plays out in real life with eye contact and body language.

Tinder and Bumble (and Coffee Meets Bagel, the League, etc.) have each party approve the other. The only major thing that distinguishes Bumble from Tinder is the female-message first policy, which is often side-stepped as described above.

Saying "hi" is still a stronger signal than swiping right.

I can see why you would think that. Based on my experiences actually using both Tinder and Bumble, it's possible that your experiences might differ significantly from mine.

It's not side-stepped. It's the best indication of sexual interest you can get, and that's what the dating platform is about, isn't it?

Being able to just say "hi" and get a date is a massive privilege.

No, I wouldn't say best. A longer comment demonstrates more interest.

It's not side-stepping. On Tinder, it's very common for someone to match, and then just never say anything or respond. Women's profiles complain about this a lot.

Well, I'd say it's 90% side-stepping. Composing a message takes more work than swiping, especially more customized messages. Just saying "Hi" is not much more work than swiping, and so mostly defeats the purpose.

Maybe saying "hi" isn't much more work than swiping in your opinion, but in reality, it seems that it is because so many people don't bother to do it. Maybe they're waiting for the other person to make the first move, or maybe they just want to collect matches, or maybe they're busy chatting up someone else and don't want to start up something new just yet but still want to keep that person around as a possibility; whatever the reason, I've seen a fair number of profiles where the person complains about matches not saying anything at all.

And I forgot to mention, I've also had the experience many, many times where I've said "hi" myself (actually, I say something a little longer than that for my first message, I try to say or ask something about something I saw in their profile or photos), and then just never get a response, but they never unmatch me either.

The first pass of filtering is both people liking each other (okcupid and tinder both require this)

The second pass is her sending the first message.

Isnt that what swiping left on tinder does?

Anecdotally, I have a real problem striking up conversations with strangers, but even a simple "hi" really seems to put me at ease. I think they're onto something for a subset of the population with my problem, and that's why I prefer Bumble to Tinder.

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