Hey Bumble, Stop Deleting My Conversations
Whether you’ve unmatched or been unmatched, there are good reasons for keeping the content.
After a dating apps hiatus last year, I decided somewhat half-heartedly to give Bumble a try. But even with low expectations, the experience has been underwhelming.
It’s further cemented my belief that dating apps are a blunt instrument for finding people you connect with. It’s even more ineffective when the focus of your search is friendship rather than romantic or sexual.
Looking for queer friends adds another layer of complexity. Even though I’m not looking for a relationship, I do want to make friends with people who come from the same world and don’t require me to explain a core element of my identity.
I didn’t use the BFF feature of Bumble because I wasn’t keen on dealing with a stream of straight women venting about their husbands. I know you can specify LGBTQ on your profile but that’s not the same as a filter. But since I remain armed to the hilt with low expectations, I feel that I may as well give it a go.
Your options are severely limited without throwing money at Bumble
It doesn’t help that accessing basic functionality like seeing who’s right- swiped you requires you to pay handsomely for gimmicks promising to give you an edge over your competition.
And the filtering process is so screwy that if you end up matched with someone with whom you share anything bigger than a Venn diagram speck of commonality, it is purely by chance.
So it’s no surprise that the unmatch feature of the app is heavily utilised, in many cases before the users have even exchanged messages. Sometimes they have interacted with each other and may have met face to face before reaching for the eject button.
According to Bumble, The purpose of the unmatch function is to give users who feel unsafe or uncomfortable an out by enabling them to immediately shut down the interaction. It also has the effect of deleting the conversation history and preventing the users from accessing each other’s profile.
But hang on, is this what is mean to happen?
