(This is quite long, so if you only want to know what I think worked, there's a TL;DR at the end.)
As I mentioned in my last post on the app Bottled, I started recording the messages I received in the app, and added some comments about why I chose to toss or keep the bottle (which I'll post in my next post, with names redacted). Why did I want to do this? Mostly because I've heard from my male friends that it's ridiculously hard to meet someone as a male on a dating app like Tinder. I wanted to see what it was like (though Bottled is not a dating app!), but I also wanted to see if I could narrow down what kind of messages were more or less successful.
Please do not take this as a generalisation on what a good message looks like! This is what I personally found worked / didn't work. Different people are going to prefer different styles of messages, so it really depends on what you are looking for. I was looking for someone to chat with to learn about new cultures (as I am married), but I tried to keep a dating mindset in the back of my mind while doing this, for the sake of this experiment. Personally, there's not much difference to me when it comes to someone I enjoy talking to, and someone I'd want to date.
Also, keep in mind that other than choosing an age range and a gender preference (and a country if you buy a specific item), you can't choose who your message goes to. So it's not like people were picking me because I had a super gorgeous photo up or anything like that.
I also incorrectly thought that people seeking friendship would only get matched with other people seeking friendship, and I was completely wrong - it seems that the app will match you with people from any setting.
When it came to replying, I tried to keep a few things in mind. A lot of my friends complained that the burden of conversation mostly fell to the guy. He had to come up with a witty opening, if the conversation died, he had to pick it back up, and more often than not, if the girl did open with a message first, it would just be "hey", so the burden still remained on his side (if he also replied with, "hey", the conversation would be left to languish). I tried my best to hold up my share of the conversation burden, despite being horribly cringeworthy and overly perky.
I only started recording messages partway through the first day, but of the four messages I recorded, I kept three of them. At this stage, nobody had kept my bottles, so I had nobody to chat with. Other than the guy who asked for nudes, I kept all the bottles that I received. Of particular note was A_France_26_M_Pirate (I've given nicknames to all the people I'll mention in detail, so you can cross reference with my giant spreadsheet tomorrow, the first character is the first letter of their username, the second part is their country, the third their age (if they specified it), the fourth is their gender, and the last is what kind of hat they chose to wear).
A_France_26_M_Pirate had a very generic nothing message, "Im lonely on that beach... Would you join me to talk a bit ?", and I don't remember anything noteworthy in his bio, but I mentioned I played computer games. Despite the time difference, he replied almost instantly and we had a conversation going. It probably helped that we had a lot in common, so the conversation flowed quite easily. Being a pirate, he hinted that he wanted to see pictures of me, but I made it 100% clear that there was no chance of that. He didn't seem to mind, and never brought it up again.
At this stage, I was trying to keep every bottle I received, except the ones where the person asked not to (e.g. only keep this if you want to sext / be my girlfriend), or I didn't understand the message. I very quickly built up a series of conversations, and the bottles didn't stop coming.
I didn't expect my conversation with D_Serbia_20_M_Pirate to pan out, but when I saw that his profile picture was a picture of Snoop Dogg, that opened up the conversation. I started to have a pretty intense conversation with R_UnitedKingdom_36_M_Pirate about MMOs, with c_Germany_blank_M_Pirate about food, D_Egypt_23_M_Sailor about The Godfather, and I was still talking to Receiver#1 about management games.
I think what helped these conversations flow were:
- we had common interests we could talk about
- most of the responses were fairly in-depth, so it wasn't just something like:
Me: Do you think Don Corleone was a bad guy in the end?
Him: No
Instead, he spoke about the nuances of the characters, and we were able to have some back and forth discussion. - the conversations weren't heavily one-sided, with one person asking all the questions or one person doing all the talking. It felt like both people were engaged in the conversation, and both people were participating equally.
- the conversations I enjoyed more were light and funny, but even the ones that weren't were interesting, with the other person wanting to share things about themselves, and learn things about me.
Pretty soon, my good intentions crumbled, and I started filtering bottles where I felt the person put in a low amount of effort: message was just "hi", or some text copy+pasted from a song / famous quote. I felt pretty terrible about it, as I still remembered that feeling of having my bottle rejected, but I justified it to myself by saying that it's better that I have fewer quality conversations than many low-quality conversations.
Not long after, my principles crumbled even further. Since I do have a full time job (believe it or not), I left bottled for before work and before bed (with the exception of A_France_26_M_Pirate who I ended up adding on Discord and messaging throughout the day). Trying to balance reading new messages, with keeping up active conversations, with trying to get some sleep became incredibly difficult. So my criteria for keeping bottles went up. Bottles that I would have kept had I seen them earlier in my journey were being tossed back into the ocean. I became scathingly critical of people's bios(which makes me a huge hypocrite, because in the entire time I was using the app, I never uploaded a photo of myself, nor filled out my bio).
I couldn't keep up. I'd go to bed with 20 bottles still in my queue, and eventually dread opening the app again, because I'd feel bad seeing even more bottles waiting. At this point, I decided it wasn't worth it, and said I'd continue until the end of the week for the sake of this experiment, but I'd uninstall the app after that. For my last day with the app, I noted down all the bottles I would have kept, and wrote the reason why, but tossed them all back into the ocean for someone else to find.
Personally, I hated those messages that said things like, "You're beautiful and amazing, don't let anyone tell you otherwise." You know nothing about me, how could you possibly say something like that and mean it? I can see that they're just trying to be positive, but it just felt fake to me.
A common complaint I see on reddit is from guys saying, "Why don't women just respond and give us a chance? It doesn't take any effort, and they might end up finding someone they connect with." I can understand that sentiment, and if I had received A_France_26_M_Pirate's message on day 2, he would have been rejected and I would have missed out on many great conversations.
But now I have an understanding of the other side of the coin - it is impossible to maintain existing conversations and also go through the sheer number of new messages, and have some semblance of a life. It took me over an hour to filter through my new messages each day (and I didn't even do all of them). To some extent, I was almost relieved to see a message asking for pics, because it meant I could reject it without having to mull over whether or not I wanted to start a conversation. Plus, some of the conversations were hard to keep up, and so there was also the aspect of weighing up the risk of getting someone who would be a drag to talk to.
I tried, I really did. Every time I tossed one of those borderline messages into the ocean, I pictured one of my single, male friends saying, "F@#$ you, why didn't you give me a chance?" (even though none of them would). I can understand why these apps are stressful now, and I didn't even get any dick pics, and barely any requests for nudes.
Stats
Number of bottles received
170
Hat distribution
Gender distribution
Country
Age range
Result
TL;DR What worked?
Messages that made it easier to reply to were a lot more likely to be kept. Ask an open-ended question, or list some of your interests.
Messages that explicitly stated what you wanted made it easier to decide how to respond. If you only want something sexual, say it outright. You may have a lower response rate, but at least you know if someone responds, they're going to give you what you want, which will save you time in the long run.
Again, I'll say I'm a hypocrite for saying this, but put something in your bio! There were some messages that I was going to reject until I read their bio and found something to connect with.
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