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From Tinder to Bumble: What Should You Download?

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at BU chapter.

A large part of dating now involves dating apps. While there are countless dating apps, there are always the few that you hear about all the time. These are normally Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagels, OKCupid, Happn, DilMil and Minder. DilMil is more common amongst South Asians, whereas Minder is commonly heard of in the Muslim community (it’s a Muslim Tinder).

What I Did

For about a week, I used all of these apps daily as I would use Tinder (which was long my default). I noted issues I had with the interface, the number of matches that I had, the number of responses that I got, the quality of the matches (judged the next morning after coffee) and the number of interesting conversations I had with these matches. The quality of the matches were calculated on a binary scale for five guys (if there were that many). The quality of conversation was ranked on whether or not I could hold a conversation with them.

Needless to say, this experiment was filled with bias.

What I found

Most of the matches I got were from people on Tinder. This might have been because I was on it for a really long time compared to the other apps. I realized that the low match on DilMil may have been because it seemed to be more of a serious dating website, for people to find someone for the long run.

 

Tinder

Tinder’s interface was honestly the easiest to use. I’ve had issues with it in the past, where it would not give me any notifications so I would have to actively open the app to see if someone responded to me. However, being a very popular dating app, you get every kind of person on it.

The good: I’ve met some really nice guys through this

The bad: “Well, you’re definitely not ugly,” and of course, a lot more.

The awkward: Because it’s really common, I went home this summer and found a solid half of my old school on it. None of them matched.

 

Happn

I just don’t understand this one. Its technically supposed to show you the people you cross paths with, but when I opened it right after downloading it, I had five people. I was in my bed and I hadn’t moved. I also expected to see a lot of people that I see on a daily basis on this, but it wasn’t the case.

The good: You know they’re close by.

The bad: I loved the concept, but didn’t enjoy the way they would put all the profiles into tiny boxes that you can look at all at of thm at once. I felt like it made it a little harsher when you were choosing someone because I found myself comparing guys side by side.

 

OkCupid

So I decided to include this one because, well, it’s the first dating app that I’ve ever heard about. That being said, I know there’s this stigma attached to it. For some reason, no matter how amazing the person seems to be, I feel like I would never really take anything that comes out of this app seriously. It might be the fact that you see people through usernames, and not through their name. I got really addicted to answering those personality questions – but as I kept answering them, my personality traits came out to be “wholesome” and “old-fashioned” which turned me off of the app even more.

The good: I feel like this is one of the apps where people really put effort into their profiles. They had extensive paragraphs on their lives, which was interesting to read.

The bad: OKCupid definitely had more messages than matches, because anyone can message you. I personally hate this, because it drew me away from the app and made me not want to use it, knowing that the few people that I actually want to talk to get buried within several hundred messages. Also, you get emails for every single message.

The awkward: Someone called me sunshine.

 

DilMil

It’s a dating app for South Asians but seems to be for more serious relationships.

The good: They have these really cute quotes that pop up whenever you open up the app, which gives it a really positive vibe. What I loved about it was that you could specify almost exactly who you wanted. What race, gender, profession etc. That definitely limits things though, because you won’t get to meet someone you never thought of.

The bad: This app has glitches, and seems to not give anyone notifications for messages. Also, you can only choose the countries to swipe in, which means you might swipe right on someone in Texas.

 

Minder

A dating app for Muslims. Minder has a pretty weird reputation to begin with, and I never understood it until I actually used it. I got a couple of messages telling me I was beautiful and they would like to marry me, and a few asking for a threesome.

The bad: It’s the same thing with DilMil: you can’t choose your location. I ended up swiping right on people in Toronto, which isn’t even in the same country.

The awkward: The marriage propositions.

 

The bad: They were also very boring. I understand that it’s messaging, and you can’t tell much from it, but I’ve met a couple of them and it was horrible.

The awkward: You get a choice between five people each day, and when you don’t like anyone it’s like, um, okay.

 

Bumble

The good: I really like how you get to choose who to talk to. It stopped all the weird messages from coming through and gave me a chance to look over who I matched with again in the morning. There are always those few people whose profiles you don’t really look over properly — the next day you realize you really don’t want to talk to them.

The bad: As someone who never has time, the whole 24-hour limit was insane. You can’t message someone after 24 hours of matching with them, which could be at any point in the day. I guess this was one way of the app trying to get you back in and using it daily, but I found a lot of the chats expiring because I didn’t have time to initiate the conversation. Also, I personally found it difficult to initiate conversations with people, mostly because most of my matches had very blank profiles.

The awkward: “Hey, I like all your dresses haha. Sometimes I wish I could wear a dress…”

 

What I learned

Literally, all of the apps I used had the same issue, which was the type of people you would run into there. There were always one or two really amazing people, but for every one great person, you would find ten awkward conversations. Also, I realized that what I put on my own profile really influenced the type of conversations I would have, which accounted for some of the differences in the quality of responses.

 

The major takeaway? While these dating apps are supposed to make things easier, dating still sucks.

Alizah Ali is a senior at BU. She's working on her biology-premed degree, which finds her often in the quietest parts of the library. She loves coffee and bunnies and running whenever the Boston weather lets her. She's a big advocate for mental health destigmatization and awareness. Follow her on instagram @lizza0419
Writers of the Boston University chapter of Her Campus.