It seems that modeling a dating app after a beehive wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Instead of feeling empowered to call the shots by making the first move, women really just wanted to be chosen.
Popular for dating and social networking, the Bumble app dropped its game-changing rule that only the ladies could make the first contact with a potential match. Now, guys can also make the first move — like nature intended. Or, at least the way 66% of women surveyed by Bumble said they like it best.
“Example #2,746,355 of women preferring traditional gender based roles,” someone posted to Reddit.
As former Tinder co-founder and Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said, “You cannot ask people what they want for the next great innovation. You have to see it before they do. You have to feel it before they do.” Bumble’s unique concept worked well enough to grow the company to $13 billion at its peak. But as singles burn out on internet dating as a whole, apps are pivoting to keep users swiping.
Along with lengthening the window for replies from 24 to 72 hours before messages disappear forever, Bumble alerted users that it was shaking up the policy that made it stand out in the first place. Well, that, and all the yellow. It was all intended to help women control their Bumble-sphere and filter out the weirdos. But with over half of users saying they’d rather choose who initiates a convo, the buzzy strategy went bust.
“While women making the first move was a radical idea, being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect. It was about designing an experience with women’s needs in mind to create better outcomes for everyone,” Wolfe Herd said in a statement on August 11. “Today, our community is asking for more flexibility, less pressure and more opportunities to create real, meaningful connections and that is what this new experience provides.”
The brand immediately lost that “it” factor now that it’s so similar to every other dating app, and people are calling it “Yellow Tinder.” But it seems like an inevitable sign of the times. Even if they originally wanted to take the wheel in relationships (because of fewer unsolicited eggplant pics), women got tired of doing all the driving.
“Dating apps demand significant effort from users seeking connections … creating appealing profiles, writing compelling messages, and balancing these tasks with daily responsibilities — all while algorithmic systems capture these interactions for corporate profit,” a study by University of Tacoma associate professor Dr. Riki Thompson showed. “On Bumble, these challenges intensify for women through time constraints that fundamentally shape modern dating behavior.”
The ladies were no longer feeling it. And neither were the guys who stuck around long enough to be invited to interact.
Things initially started to change a decade after Bumble’s launch when, in 2024, the platform pulled a switcheroo with its Opening Moves initiative, allowing guys to respond to a prompt on a woman’s profile before she knew he existed. Still, the new policy doesn’t make too much of a difference if you’re familiar with how dating apps work.
Twenty-eight-year-old Emily Spence, who’s been on Bumble for over a decade, says, “The requirement for women to message first didn’t really prevent creeps from messaging you. Just because you say ‘hey’ first doesn’t mean a man isn’t gonna send you something crazy after. It was kind of like a false sense of protection.”
There’s been plenty of backlash toward the app that made its name for “bringing feminism to your phone.” But even women who felt safer using the ladies-first platform still waited for guys to make a move.
“I have another friend that claims to have given up on online dating yet also doesn’t bother to message guys on Bumble. To me that’s akin to using a pen with the cap on,” a Redditor noted.
In tandem with the Bumble business model, the relationship brain rot hoisted upon young single women over the last decade was real. “I pity Venus de Milo,” a writer for Coveteur lamented in 2017. “She’s standing still like a hostage at the Louvre waiting for someone else to decide her fate. Like a woman waiting for a man to save her from a tragic ending.”
The message was: Get off your booty, Aphrodite, and take the reins, you empowered boss! Manifest your man! The world is your oyster! Except that was also the same world in which the viral #MeToo movement essentially shut down the possibility of random eye contact in public without notarized consent. (And let’s be real, it also did nothing to stop all that Hollywood junk from continuing on without a hitch.)
So, who exactly were these women supposed to go out there and get? The decent men being told they were the toxic patriarchy and nobody needed them? Those guys? Weird that it’s been so hard to meet good people.
“I swear dating is such a Catch-22,” another Redditor posted. “Women say they don’t like being approached, but what they really mean is that they don’t want to be approached by somebody that they don’t find attractive. But for a guy the only way you’ll ever know if she finds you attractive or not is to ACTUALLY approach her. Yet she knows who she finds attractive, but doesn’t approach him and make the first move.”
So are apps like Bumble doomed to fail? Or is it an undeniable primal instinct for most women to want to be chosen — and for men to do the deciding, at least at first?
We’re at a point where most people are cool with anyone making the first move, as long as there’s a glimmer of a green light. But a man who offers to buy a woman a drink, for example, expresses everything with a single gesture: confidence, safety, readiness, initiative, and assertiveness. Done with finesse at the risk of getting denied? Hot.
“In evolutionary terms and in everyday markets of attention, that matters because people prefer partners who seem able to face life, not just talk about it,” the Good Men Project notes. “Men initiating can read as competence: ‘I will go get things started,’ the behavior says. That’s attractive to people who value decisiveness and clarity.”
With 80 million people navigating online dating, stats show men are happier than women in relationships where each respectively asked for the first date. The heart wants what the heart wants. And it wants him to man up and invite her out to dinner. Coffee. Whatever.
Whether it happens online or in real life, we’re meant to be in strong relationships with each other, not swimming around solo in a pool of AI bots. As Bumble partner and happiness professor Arthur Brooks explains, “Decades of research show that close, committed relationships are among the strongest predictors of long term happiness and health. Humans are wired for connection, but when modern dating stays confined to the digital realm — when matches don’t translate into meaningful, in person relationships — it can erode emotional well-being over time.”
Maybe we’re all just over the wash, rinse, repeat of hoping for “the one” in a system designed for failure; one more match is two fewer paying subscribers. But for anyone still on Team Bumble, there may be a chance. Of course, it’s best to be realistic about that knight in shining armor — or the objectively hot Forbes 30 Under 30 guy in the quarter-zip.
Business manager and Bumble user Stefanie Feldman says, “I like that it takes off the pressure. Sometimes I just want the men to do the work. I’ve never considered myself a feminist. I want to be pursued. And just because someone reaches out to you doesn’t mean you have to say anything. So that is a feminine power in itself, learning to say no.”
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