We all have our “squad” that group that you can rely on to always be there whether it comes to waking up for early morning yoga or to be your wingman every thirsty Thursday. But what happens when you and your squad are thousands of miles apart for the summer. How do you cope without the go to people in your life and more importantly how do you remedy the situation?
By now you have probably heard of Bumble, a dating app where the woman makes the first move. The lesser-known part of this app is the BFF mode where your stellar profile is shared with girls looking to build up their squad. BFF mode requires more effort than any other dating app I have tried.
Here was my experience:
While making my profile I stalked all my Facebook and instagram photos to pick the perfect way to showcase who I am, and beyond the photos I tried to make sure my bio showed that I was looking for friends who were driven, fun, and coffee addicted. But I also wanted to make sure I was showing them that I was worth their time, it felt like building a resume to show my career aspirations as well as my fun hobbies.
Once the bio was done it was time to start swiping right. To my surprise I found myself actually reading the bios, not just looking at the first photo, and even more surprising I was swiping left way more often than I should. I was judging girls by the photos they chose, their grammar (and trust me I am no grammar queen), and lastly I was judging them by what they were looking for. Here I was judging girls I knew nothing about. After day one I matched with two or three people, and I was horrified. On tinder I could get two matches within two swipes!
After feeling a little defeated and tweaking some of my photos I decided to start being more generous with my right swiping, as long as they were open to meeting people than I should be to. I still didn’t have half as many matches as I expected, but it was better than two.
That’s when the adventure began as I tried to figure out the perfect way to start a conversation. I knew there wouldn’t be some cheesy pick up line to break the ice and I knew that I only had 24 hours to start a conversation so I found a GIF that represented me and said “hey I’m fun lets be friends” (in the least desperate way possible) and I sent that GIF to every girl I matched with. It was the pick up line for finding your BFF. Eventually I planned a meet up with four girls so we could all get to know each other and make connections in a new unfamiliar city.
Meeting IRL for your first “girl date” requires a lot. It requires interesting conversation, a killer outfit, and most importantly no fear. I needed to put myself out there and try to see if these were people I could see myself getting Sunday brunch with and celebrating surviving a full week of work. At the end of the day these girls maybe weren’t my BFFs for life, but my bumble experience taught me a few important things.
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and try something new. I know I encourage my friends to do this and I push myself to try new things all the time, but doing these things on your own can really put you out of your comfort zone.
You may not find your best friend but don’t be discouraged to keep meeting new people. Bumble BFF may have not been the best experience for me, but I learned some great ways to meet people and it has made me less nervous to put myself out there when I meet someone new at work or an event.
Lastly and most importantly, we need to stop judging, judging other people and judging ourselves. The time I spent saying to myself oh she used that filter, or that dress looks trashy, or her makeup was to heavy was time I could have spent actually getting to know someone. Bumble BFF mode taught me to be more open and to show off who we are as individuals and love that person for everything that they are. We can tweet out inspirational #girlboss quotes and read all the Body Love articles we want, but eventually we need to put that in action.