Swipe Right: Creating Real-Life Connections via Apps

Finding a date these days is virtually effortless. Pun intended.

Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish, Hinge – these are only a few dating apps circulating on iPhones and Androids, the users consisting of people looking to date or meet up with compatible individuals. The concept of the dating app is easy enough: you upload a few pictures to your profile, add a little blurb in your “about me” section and swipe left or right on others’ profiles to indicate if you’re interested in a potential suitor or not.

Dating apps have become so ingrained in our culture that I will sometimes hear someone bellow, “Swipe left!” when something is unappealing, such as a burnt piece of avocado toast.

But what about the people who aren’t interested in dating?

A concept: An ambitious, well-read young woman moves to a new city. Her best friends live thousands of miles away. She craves human connection. She downloads a dating app, thinking that’s a fabulous way to meet new people. She swipes, she matches. She messages this seemingly charming young man, yet after a few back-and-forth messages, she realizes that he’s fickle and, honestly, revolting. She deletes the dating app, confused and forlorn.

Sometimes it feels like the only way to meet new people is to seek romantic prospects. For some, planning a social outing with friends is as exhausting as solving an advanced calculus problem. For others, the idea of a social life itself seems simply unattainable, as they don’t recognize a single familiar face within a 500-mile radius. Dating apps are accessible and abundant, so they seem to have become the go-to platforms in seeking human connection. But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore.

Bumble, which is used for the most part as a dating app, has added another feature on it called “Bumble BFF.” Bumble BFF works the same way any old dating app works – swipe left for no, swipe right for yes. But users are swiping with the expectation that they are looking for companionships, not romances.

When I discovered the new feature, I downloaded Bumble and updated the settings so that I would only see people seeking friends. I filled out my profile, hoping that it portrayed the image of a good friend, and began swiping. Miraculously, the first time I swiped right, I got a match! Her name is Bernice, and she loves margaritas as much as I do. 

She messages me, “Hey girl!” 

I like her already.

After a conversation about what each of us does and where we went to school, we decide to meet up (for margaritas, of course). Friend-prospective dates are so much easier than romantic-prospective dates. She’s welcoming, adorable and sweet. After hanging out with her once, she asked me to join her in celebrating Halloween with another girl she met on the app, Cynthia. As I drove home, the place in my heart that was desperately missing my thousands-of-miles-away friends seemed to be healing.

Making friends is so much more satisfying than dating. Thanks, Bumble BFF.