After listening to my new favorite podcast, We Met at Acme, and finishing all six seasons of Sex and the City, I decided to channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw and download some dating apps. For this article, I downloaded Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid and Hinge. I have been actively using them for about a month and going on them a few times a week each.
All four apps are free but have additional features you can purchase if you are so inclined. All of the apps let you set your preference for age, distance and what gender you are interested in, but for this article I will be writing from my own straight, female perspective.
I’ll start with my least favorite of the apps, OkCupid. I heard about this app from the podcast I mentioned earlier and was honestly looking forward to it, only to be let down. If I’m going to be blunt, the guys on OkCupid were not the cutest. I realize this is subjective, so maybe they just weren’t my type. I also got a lot of creepier messages than usual on this app. One man told me he wanted to marry me, worship me and live his whole life with me. I also thought that the layout of this app was really strange and not very user friendly. The app requires you to make a bio, unlike others, so if you are bad at bios (like myself) this might not be the app for you. I will say that you can add a multitude of features about yourself from zodiac sign to height. One thing that was unique about OkCupid was that you have to specify what you are looking for on the app: short-term dating, long-term dating or just hook-ups. I actually really liked this feature. I think more dating apps should have this so everything is out in the open before you start talking to someone.
Rating: 2/5
Next is good old Tinder. I feel like Tinder gets a bad rep for being known as the “hookup-app,” but in all honesty, there are an endless number of people on there, so you’re bound to find someone. As far as the logistics of the app, it really just focuses on pictures of the person and many people don’t even put bios (guilty). So, if you are looking for someone purely based on physical attraction (which is very important in my opinion), then Tinder might be the best for you. Now you can connect your Spotify account to Tinder so you can see a person’s taste in music, which is kind of cool, especially if you value taste in music like myself. I’m really just impartial to Tinder. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it. Also, for the love of God, someone tell these Tinder boys to find some better pick-up lines.
Rating: 3/5
Onto Bumble. Bumble’s whole tag line is that the girls have to message the guys first on the app, so this can either be a pro or a con depending on the person. If you’re a girl and you’re bold, then this is the app for you. It’s essentially the same concept as Tinder with the swiping, but you have a 24-hour window to message the guy first if you match, which I didn’t really like. I didn’t check these apps every day, so if I had matched with someone cute and hadn’t messaged them within the window, they disappeared. Bumble also has an option to just find friends if you are interested in that, which I thought was a good option for someone who had just moved to a new city or something along those lines. You can also do BumbleBizz to find business connections, which, let’s be honest, just make a LinkedIn account.
Rating: 3.5/5
Lastly, we will move onto my favorite of the apps, Hinge. First of all, Hinge has a cool layout with pictures and words alternating, so I was automatically drawn to that. Hinge requires you to answer three prompts. They give you a lot to choose from. For example: “I got detention for…,” “My ideal Sunday is…” or “The most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done is…,” which end up being good conversation starters and tell you a bit more about the person. Hinge also gives you the option to like someone’s picture, leave a comment on one of the pictures or respond to one of the person’s prompts, which was cool. I liked that the app lets you put in political views, religion, your job, if you drink or smoke and if you do or do not want kids (not yet please). I also will say that the guys on Hinge were the cutest out of the apps (next to Bumble). One thing that I didn’t like about Hinge was that it gave me a lot of guys that were far away (I’m talking like Louisville) even though I set my distance preferences closer than that.
Rating: 5/5
By: Marvin McCarty | Guest Writer
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