The Dating App Experience is Different for Tall White Guys Than Other Men
What it’s like to be everyone’s type on Bumble
Bumble is a different kind of dating site where the man can’t send the first message. Contact must be initiated by the woman for straight relationships. The women can send messages to men, and the men message back.
For this reason, most men hate it. Men who aren’t having much luck on traditional dating sites have even less hope on Bumble.
I do okay on dating apps. I’m a writer and make a profile like no one’s business. I’m a master of finding something in a woman’s profile to message them about. If the women read my profile, I might have a shot. But on sites like Tinder where you get a picture and short bio, I get no engagement.
I’m not ugly, but I’m not hot. I’m generic looking. Brown hair, brown eyes, with my hair cut short enough to hide my receding hairline. I’m not the guy women pick when they’re looking for a good time.
The deal breaker is my height. I’m not quite 5'9". I feel lying is not the best way to start off a relationship, so I’m honest about it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum my friend Jason. Jason is 6'4" with blue eyes, light skin, and dark hair. He stays in shape without trying. His side hustle is modeling men’s watches. Never has trouble finding women, but they don’t stay long.
I wouldn’t call him stupid, because he’s bigger than me. But he’s definitely on the left side of the bell curve for intelligence. He’s a simple guy who likes, drinking beer, watching baseball, and playing video games. Works low paying jobs that he gets fired from frequently. Behind his deep blue eyes there’s not much going on.
Years ago, I was over at his place, and he was bragging that he’d gone out with 3 women he met last week on Bumble and slept with one of them. I’d heard about the new app where the ladies messaged you instead of vice versa.
He said for most women he was the first guy on Bumble they’d gone out with. If you’re popular on a social media app, your profile will come up sooner. Dating apps show the most popular profiles to the new members to put their best foot foward to get people to pay for a premium account.
“Can I see your profile,” I asked.
Jason was no marketing wiz. I don’t think he knows what self-promotion means so I was curious to see what he was doing that worked so well.
The profile for Bumble is like the profile on Tinder. You get a name, age, picture, and a bio. If they click, they can see your height and job too. But it’s a meat market much like Tinder.
It’s all about the picture.
Jason’s pictures were the definition of nothing special. His profile picture was a low res cell phone picture of him at a pool party with his friends holding a beer.
His second pic was him in a bar drinking a beer, The third picture was him at a Dodger game, holding 2 beers.
His bio:
I like partying, baseball, and playing video games.
Just as I suspected. Jason’s popularity was due to him being a tall white guy.
In his first picture you could see he towered over everyone else at the party. You could also see his blue eyes.
His vacant drunken stare was irrelevant. It didn’t matter he was projecting alcoholic lounge about who lived with parents. He was hot and the girls liked that.
He was also made minimum wage, so I was curious how he could afford going on these dates.
“I tell them to meet me at the bar. If they won’t go to a bar I don’t go out with them.”
“I paid for the drinks of the one I banged. The next one my card got declined so she had to pay, otherwise we would have banged. The third one I wasn’t planning on taking out till I get paid Thursday. When I told her I didn’t have money to take her out, she offered to pay.”
“I have 10 more girls that want to go out with me that I don’t have the money to take out. I tell them to come over and we can watch a movie. Sometimes they do. The hot ones usually want to go out first.”
He showed me his inbox and he had messages from at least 100 different women. Looking at the messages I could see he put age limit low. He liked dating younger girls for obvious reasons. Most of them were average looking.
What surprised me was the ethnic variety. There were more Asians than anything. He had white, black, Arabs, Indians, and everything in between. Jason only took out the hot ones out on a date to the bar but if they were willing to come over, he wasn’t picky.
Few were turned off by his blatant lack of conversation skills. I looked at the back and forth and saw a lot of 1-to-3-word answers back from him. “Come over” was his go to line. If they said no, most of the conversations ended there.
Good for him. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. If you want to be more successful it helps to understand the game. Girls like tall guys. Height is a biological factor of attraction. Lying about your height won’t change it.
I never had any luck on Bumble. I’ve never gotten a message. Maybe it’s because I’m short or it could be my tendency to go with humor when writing my profile.
If you're a guy that has more in the creative department than looks, dating sites are not where you’ll find the caliber of women you deserve. Show off your wit on websites like Twitter, Quora, and here on Medium.
I never had much luck finding someone I was compatible with on dating sites. My ex-wife and I met on Myspace. I met my current girlfriend right here on Medium. It’s nice dating someone who will believe I downloaded the Bumble app for a story.
I loaned Jason 60 bucks and haven’t heard from him since but if he’s single he’s still on dating apps sending 2 word replies to college girls.
I want to hear from the ladies in the comments. Is Jason’s a right swipe or left swipe?
Men, go ahead and complain about women. Because that’s what you comment in my stories about dating. It’s fine, really. You have my permission.
LGTBQ, I’d love to hear how Grindr works so please enlighten us. Thanks for reading.
