Well...Basically
Well...Basically
190: Dating CrApps
On today's show; Dating Apps! We talked about them!
They're not doing so well, they are being somewhat reprimanded by the government and Gen Z alike.
We talked about our own experience with them and what they are doing to change in the current climate.
We hope you enjoy today's episode.
Articles mentioned:
- Online dating code will require Tinder, Hinge to act on dangerous users, cooperate with law enforcement - ABC News
- Why young women are falling out of love with dating apps - Australian Financial Review
this is well, basically with your host, mike de silva, and sam weeks on today's show.
Speaker 3:Do you like apps? Dating apps? We talked about them. They're not doing so well. They are being somewhat reprimanded by the government. We talked about our own experience with them and what they are doing to change in the current climate. We hope you enjoy today's episode. This is Well Basically, well Basically.
Speaker 2:What the lisp got you.
Speaker 4:I think the lisp got me. I think I had the lisp before I became gay.
Speaker 3:Do you think that when people meet you, they know that you're gay instantly?
Speaker 4:Yeah, mainly because if they're a woman, I ham up the gay to make them feel comfortable and safe with me, and if they're a man, I just try to fuck them Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, Making them very comfortable.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Uncomfortable for the straight man.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately.
Speaker 3:I think you're doing the Lord's work by doing that. You know.
Speaker 4:I'm testing boundaries. Yeah, I'm helping.
Speaker 3:What about you.
Speaker 2:Mikey Uh, probably depends on the scenario.
Speaker 3:Cause I actually didn't know you were gay for a very long time. You know that right, very long time. You know that right. I think a couple of the women at the uni were keen.
Speaker 4:Oh really nice. Well, it's never too late to dip in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have you ever made sweet love to a woman? No, just a lot of passion oh yeah, I've actually never asked you that you, so you've never.
Speaker 4:That's okay, that's interesting, um yeah that was my um new year's resolution and I've still I've still not made good on that.
Speaker 3:I've got only four months left.
Speaker 4:I think three months. That's all right, we'll find someone.
Speaker 3:We're going to talk about how you might be able to do that or not. Um also, uh, yeah, I'm from that Like it's weird that like attacks, just it's just aerobics yeah, it's like proper aerobics, but at that time we weren't allowed to ham it up oh, you had to be like mask, aerobics so maybe I was, yeah, maybe I was that convincing, yeah yeah, people know that you're straight when they meet you, sam
Speaker 3:no, they actually don't, absolutely not. That's actually the. The general assumption is that I'm not a straight man, which is still. I still labor under that, and then I I remember actually it happened at a party not that long ago. I I was talking to a guy for a long time, I assumed you were straight yeah, well, I think straight people, I mean I think gay men, know that I'm straight, but like straight men assume I'm gay for some reason. And bisexual men, just, they get confused. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Um, what you, what you were saying recently, you were at a party, oh yeah, and I was talking to her for ages and, uh, chloe came over and he was like shocked that I had a wife, cause I think he really thought that I was a gay man. Oh wow, oh my gosh. I kind of love it though.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's good.
Speaker 3:I think I've told the story on here before when I it was, wasn't it Mardi Gras? I can't remember, I had my nails painted. It might have not been Mardi Gras, and we were at what's the gay bar with all the dancing. No, the other one Pal further down. Oh, universal, universal, and one of the pts I used to work with who's a woman, who's there and she's like oh my god, I never knew and I was like you're like that's me.
Speaker 2:Thanks, queen slay the house down boots. I know a number of heterosexual men that wear nail polisher yeah, I know it's cool now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we used to.
Speaker 3:I stopped doing it when my nails got absolutely yeah, I got paper-thin nails. It's not a nice feeling.
Speaker 4:No, it's really scary. How am I supposed to dig?
Speaker 3:like a mole in the backyard.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they just kept breaking off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me and Chloe do our mole play. It doesn't work out. I can be blind, but if I can't dig, it doesn't work.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, it's the biggest part of being a mole and sniffing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm good at that. I'm very good at it yeah, it is yeah, so I stopped at that.
Speaker 2:Chloe just storms off and she's like you can't.
Speaker 4:There's definitely someone out there who does mole play right? Oh yeah, if you do, please write in.
Speaker 3:I would love to do it as a star-nosed mole.
Speaker 2:Find something pink and fleshy to put on my nose those things.
Speaker 3:It's probably versatile in that scenario. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:There's so many things. You could pleasure six people at once. No, I've got a vision of that gross star mole on my head.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're cute.
Speaker 4:They're like octopuses, but only on their nose.
Speaker 2:There should be no octopiies.
Speaker 3:Octopussies, octopussies, yeah.
Speaker 4:So we had to cut out doing the nails and now nothing hides all the dirt that I got underneath them when they were painted. It was great Because I couldn't bite my nails, because it was S&S, it was rock solid and also it would hide all of like the just like the normal day muck that you get under there.
Speaker 2:So now I have to like clean it out. What are you doing? Are you a landscape gardener?
Speaker 4:Mole play.
Speaker 3:Mole play. Mole play is a good phrase Mole role play Welcome. House music Because I love it. It's the best genre of music, wouldn't you agree, andrew? Maybe?
Speaker 4:It's a genre of music. It is a genre of music.
Speaker 3:What about you, mike? Do you think it's a genre of music?
Speaker 2:I do agree, it's a genre of music, it's my favorite. I don't know if I can pick a favorite.
Speaker 3:What episode is it? Welcome, welcome, welcome, you know it. One nine zero, oh my God, I'm so sorry we went here last week. That happens. Yeah, mikey was away and Andrew was away, and I haven't done a podcast by myself. Oh, I was also away. What am I talking about? No one was here. We could have just run dead air. We could have People would listen. No, they wouldn't. Maybe they don't listen as it is. Who are we shouting out this week? Mechanics, honest, mechanics, honest.
Speaker 3:Thank you for being honest, mike and the Mechanics Sorry, mike and the Mechanics who the hell's that? That's a band, what's that? Never heard of it. I hope you're having a good week Wherever you are out there Fixing that car. Gig plug, actually, no, no gig plug, because the gig will be over by the time I plug it.
Speaker 4:You can re-listen to the gig on SoundCloud.
Speaker 3:I'm going to pretend like the gig's happened. It was amazing and you should have been there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was real good.
Speaker 3:And if you were there and you made out with me on the dance floor, more of it. Yeah, do it again. Yeah, mikey, I mean, andrew was really down someone's throat the whole night. Wow, okay, great, that's unreleased music. By the way, that was very subtle.
Speaker 4:Unreleased Sneaky, sneaky. Will it have been released when this releases? No, oh my God, that was a true release.
Speaker 3:Secret, secret, secret, Harvey Sutherland. Thank you for that legend, you know what we're talking about today.
Speaker 4:I actually do, yeah, wow, do you know, mikey? Yeah, wow, we all know, could you could?
Speaker 3:one of you tell me then Applications for dating, otherwise known as dating apps.
Speaker 4:My forte. Yeah, there's been some moving and shaking in the dating app world in the last couple years. Uh, I, as a chronically single person, um, have really felt the effects of what's going on in the dating world and there is, I think, a quite heavy bend going on in dates in dating apps sad and grim and also a more light fun. You're being like robbed by a corporation, vibe as a as another kind of vein that's going through. So I wanted to start with what is the most recent news.
Speaker 4:The ABC ran an article about three days ago. It's called online dating code will require Tinder hinge to act on dangerous users. Corporate cooperate with law enforcement. This was written by Jake Evans. He's a political reporter for the ABCc and, as a overview of it, um, basically there is an australia wide industry code for dating apps that governs how they are supposed to protect users from harm. I don't know if you've been following the news, but there's been a lot of news of people meeting or using dating apps to rob other people, and one of the more common ones recently has been people using dating apps like Grindr to lure gay people to like abandoned car parks and then beating the shit out of them. Oh my.
Speaker 3:God, is that shit that's still happening. That's all, oh my God.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was in Canberra. It was endemic over there. I think it happened. I don't want to say it happened in New South Wales. It might that there was another case, but there was a lot of cases around and these kinds of cases also people using it for scams, stealing money through scams and people using it for, like, basically, robbing houses.
Speaker 3:Also, the occasional person gets killed sometimes, as well, absolutely I've heard of that happening multiple times, so the government went hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 4:Listen here, dating apps, they're all basically controlled by one company called Match Group. Match Group owns Hinge. It owns Tinder, it owns Matchcom. It owns, I think, plenty of Fish. It owns a ton of them. It's like 90% of the market is them, Jesus?
Speaker 2:how many are there?
Speaker 4:There's a lot Very sad news. The ones it doesn't own Grindr is not owned by Match Group and Bumble is not owned by Match Group, but of the notable ones that you'll have heard of, those are the only two not owned by Match Group. The Australian government said to Match Group and the rest of the dating apps listen, this is partly on you. You guys don't have a really good way for people to report users. A really big problem on dating apps is that if, uh, let's say, let's say, I abuse someone on a dating app and then block them immediately, they can't go to my profile to report me.
Speaker 4:There's no way for them to notify the app that I was me because you, just as a safety precaution for the person doing the blocking, disappear completely from their feed. Um grinder has started to uh, they've rolled out in America this thing where you can see all of your previous people that have blocked you, or all the previous chats you've had. Sorry, you can't see any of the chats, you can't see any of the pictures, you can just see like a name of them. So if someone does that to you and then immediately blocks you, you can report them still, just from that little feature. But Anyway, the Australian government said you apps have not been doing enough. These cases are terrible. Women are being abused all over the country. You need to have an industry code. Industry codes are often not enforceable by law. The idea is all of these companies sign up for them so that they can make rules that they think will appease the government. So the government doesn't have to come in and say we are now stepping in and doing this.
Speaker 4:And so it's the first port of call to see if the industry can self-regulate. It's really common self-regulation industry. It's big in the finance industry. It's big in lawyers it's big.
Speaker 4:A lot of industries use it and now bring it all those evil industries actually oh, it's in a whole other podcast the self-regulation of the finance industry in australia is some of the best in the entire world. We have whole funds set up to support financial it's. I'm not gonna go, that is way off what we're talking about. It's crazy that you know about that as well. It's because I was part. I was working for an organization that wrapped up in a really nefarious and evil way and all the money from the whole industry supported all the victims of this company, including moi. Oh, I'll talk about it on our finance industry episode um so the government came in and they said you need to govern yourselves.
Speaker 4:And so the um apps have come together and they have agreed on um. Uh, so the reason they did it was a recent academic study found that three in four people who'd used dating apps in the past five years had been subjected to some kind of sexual violence. Three in four that's fucking crazy. The voluntary code will become enforceable in April and then they'll review it again in 2026 to determine whether it should become mandatory by law by the government. And the code basically sets out a few different things. Firstly, if a user gets banned from one of the apps for going against the rules, then every other app within the family will also ban that user. So they'll use that unique phone code to ban that user from all the other apps. And they also can't make new accounts, which is a big problem that people get banned to make a new account. Also, they've got oh, I've forgotten them all.
Speaker 4:There's some, really, there's some good ones in there. There's mandatory reporting now. So, um, the apps have to be really forthcoming with information about people doing abuse. So if, say, a user reports, if I, if you commit sexual violence against me, sam, and I report you. That shows up on my profile. Well, no, it won't show up on your profile, but what it will do is um, I go to jail. The app has to report to the police what I reported to them.
Speaker 3:I'm so shocked that that doesn't happen. The apps.
Speaker 4:Right now they go that's andrew's job. Or like, if I, if I abuse you, sam, it's sam's job to uh, go to the police, it's not the app's job. But the apps now have to be incredibly cooperative and forthcoming with this information to police. Um, there's a whole bunch of stuff in there, but, um, overall I think it's a good move for the industry.
Speaker 4:One thing they are adding in which I think is like the most archaic archaic thing is the government is going to set up a website where users can rate the apps and their experience on the app, so other people can see how they're doing. Now that, first off, is already a feature in the app store that exists in the phone without the government doing it. Secondly, who in the world is going to know that you can go and rate tinder as a company on the australian government website and say, oh, I had a bad experience. That's just going to be all bad reviews, surely? Surely there's no one going on there to be to a government website being like I had a great time on tinder, I had so much fun? No, that's unusual. Anyway, that's a big round for me. What are your guys thoughts, uh, on this new industry code?
Speaker 3:I think it's fine. I guess, if they're being proactive about it, I was going to say they should do that with the music industry probably as well.
Speaker 4:Was there a lot of sexual violence going on in the music industry?
Speaker 3:No, they're just like robbing people pretty much day in, day out, wow, but in terms of this I think it's good. I mean, I, like personally, didn't really have any super negative experiences which is what we're going to get into later and our experiences with the apps but I think it's good. If people are being harmed, then someone should step in and do something about it.
Speaker 4:I've been catfished on apps before. I don't think I've had any sexual violence committed against me. I have had. I've invited someone over, say, for a hookup, and they've looked nothing like their picture. I've had to boot them from the house.
Speaker 2:How far away.
Speaker 4:What do you mean? How far into it, how far away?
Speaker 2:How far away from the picture was it?
Speaker 4:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Oh, no the description will get me cancelled.
Speaker 1:I can't, I can't.
Speaker 4:They were significantly far away to the point that I know this story. Yeah, yeah, and I'm not. I'm unfortunately not going to tell it you don't.
Speaker 4:that's not a requirement but yeah, I've had that happen to me and I've had my pictures obviously like saved, like someone's used fake pictures to get my pictures out of me and then they've like immediately blocked me. And you know it's happened because you show your pictures and you see theirs and they're like not not very good or whatever, or they look like professional pictures from someone that's famous online and then you go to obviously report them and, like I said, you can't, their profile's gone. They've snagged it and gone. Your pictures are somewhere on the web which personally I'm not too fussed about. If I go into politics and someone says we've got Andrew's nudes, I'll be like okay, so just like half of Sydney man.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you think you got there.
Speaker 4:It's not very valuable though, yeah, so I mean, I think it's a good code. I think what was really eyeopening was that, yeah, you guys are right, it's weird that they didn't have an obligation to report people being like I got harassed by this person to the police that they would go. That's the user's job.
Speaker 3:I just would have assumed that there would have been checks and balances with something with like that has the potential for this many bad things to happen. You know there should have been checks and balances from the outset.
Speaker 4:I agree, harm prevention. I think one of the things that goes it's kind of a negative is because they've got a mandatorily report. If the police request chat logs, for instance from an app, pretty much if this becomes mandatory for them, they have to give those chat logs to the police, without maybe not to paint it. I don't know, I don't know the actual legality of it, but it seems like your chats will be more open to review than they would have been before, where, before the police would say we're doing an investigation, can we see the chats between these two people? Then the apps would naturally say give me the legal document that says that I have to do that. But that's a small price to pay and, honestly, if the police want to look at my nudes, like I said before, they probably can. I'm probably shared it with police before.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly. They'll bend and squat. I don't care. You can beat them to the chase and just send them now.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, that is. That's a sum up for that. Any questions, or should I move on to the next article?
Speaker 2:How can you?
Speaker 4:move right. They've got hell long I love that.
Speaker 3:No one's ever said that ever. That might be the first time that sentence has ever been said.
Speaker 4:So this story links nicely to this. This next story that I'm going to talk about links nicely to the one we've just talked about because obviously they're related to dating apps. But the reason that this code hasn't been brought in before is because there's never been a huge amount of scrutiny on the dating apps. People would use them and then kind of move on to something else, or they would enjoy their experience on them and they would go through. And if you have good public will, dating apps don't have to come to the table with the government and say we're going to do a voluntary code. But right now dating apps are at the probably lowest ebb they've been in years since their creation in terms of public sentiment. People do not like the dating apps. Gen Z has eschewed them. They are off them completely, particularly Gen Z women, which is causing an incredible imbalance in the straight dating app world, where it's something like 85%, I think, users on dating apps are men. Whoa, actually, svetlana, could you find for me what the percentages are?
Speaker 1:The ratio of men to women varies by app, with Hinge having the lowest of 65%, or about two men for every woman, and Tinder having the highest of 78%, or about four men for every woman.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's a shocking can you do it faster next time? Thanks, she's so slow. Um, she obviously has. We paid for her to do that touch typing course and she hasn't obviously done it.
Speaker 4:I reckon she took the money and pocketed it still on the typewriter yeah, sveti just took harmonica courses. That's why she keeps playing. I mean, listen to this.
Speaker 3:Oh, she needs more listens.
Speaker 4:So the Australian Financial Review I hope this article opens because it was like trying to paywall me before has an article called why Young Women Are Falling Out of Love With Dating Apps. So young women are increasingly leaving dating apps, citing feelings of burnout, frustration and concerns over safety and superficiality. So this is quite an old article. I think this is about four or five months old. Platforms like Tinder and Bumble have seen declining engagement, especially among Gen Z women, and it's led to new features aimed at improving user experience and addressing harassment.
Speaker 4:So I don't know if you guys are tapped into the world of dating apps, but they've been trying to like revolutionize. They've all kind of converged at a point where they're kind of the same. Uh, what they're doing now is bumble's um, uh, what's it called? Unique, unique offering. Yeah, it's hook was that the woman message first. Yeah, I gave women the power for the first message. A man and a woman would match. Now for gays, it makes no difference, you're just on the app. They're not going to be like the woman messages first between two guys. No one's going to talk. They don't know who the bottom is in that situation, so they can't really that's what they need to do.
Speaker 3:They should do bottom messages first.
Speaker 4:That's good. That's the next innovation. Bumble has scrapped that. They did a huge ad campaign that was basically up to this point. They hadn't mentioned that that was what was going to happen. They really made it look like they were going to revolutionize Bumble. It was going to be a whole new app and then everyone was getting really excited to see what Bumble was doing. They deleted everything off their Instagram and they just had one post on there that was like coming up in whatever. And then on the date they came out and their post was oh yeah, we're scrapping the women message first rule and everyone went what's the point? What? Now? You're just tinder amazing. So that was their innovation hinges innovation was that you could no longer have more than eight matches at a time. You had to delete some before you can match with new people I think that's.
Speaker 4:I mean I in my experience I think that's quite good it is very good for people that collect, like yeah, like collect and collect people I mean my it comes more like a game. You're like I've got to do something with what I have and find out if it's going to be a thing yeah, the problem is people don't generally simultaneously have eight conversations going on, so it doesn't really increase the gusto to chat with people they should make it three.
Speaker 4:They should what happens is you will then match. What often the story is, as people will match with people, the conversation won't go anywhere, and then, as that person moves down the list and gets to the bottom of the eight, they'll eventually just get deleted, like two months later, so it doesn't really make you more engaged with them. If it was three, you're right. Two people that you could chat with one person at a time, that's, that's revolutionary. You get stuck with a fricking boring one.
Speaker 3:No, but you just you just delete them, if but yeah, you could make it. We call the app.
Speaker 4:The One. Oh my God, bleep that out, bleep that out.
Speaker 3:If you're just constantly deleting.
Speaker 2:It's a constant stream anyway.
Speaker 3:No, you would make it so like there had to be some form of conversation that occurs before.
Speaker 4:Well, you don't even have to have that, you could have a minimum back and forth of like four messages or something.
Speaker 4:The issue that happens is I like you on tinder, you like me back on tinder. I say hey to you on tinder. You never respond and then you just end up in this graveyard of people that sit down in my list. If it was only one at a time and I said hey to you, you don't respond for a day, I just delete you and then move on to the next person. It also means that you are locked out of the app until you unmatch me like you can't match with someone because you're already matched with me.
Speaker 2:This is fucking exhausting yeah, well, this is dating apps dating up for you exhausting babe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have huge caches of people that I just wouldn't talk to.
Speaker 4:I think that's good so with these new features they're trying to put in um, it's not really worked too well and the shift suggests that younger um users are now seeking more meaningful offline connections, which contributes to a broader decline in the appeal of online dating.
Speaker 3:That's so good. I love that yeah it is very good.
Speaker 4:That's why things like run clubs seen as the new dating world or a lot of sporting organizations. There's five-a-side soccer. In the gay world there's kickball. There's a lot of different sporting and outside activities. Very good for people's health but also good for people's socialization that people are turning to the issue, is it's catching the extroverts. Effectively, the extroverts are saying I don't want to do the apps the rest of us, the introverts, are going.
Speaker 4:Oh, I'm now just stuck in this cesspit. And also what I mean introverts trying to date introverts off an app, an app that actively is trying to keep you from dating people. This is the other thing. I have no proof of this. There's probably a statistical analysis out there that I don't have my hands on, but dating apps algorithms have changed in the last five years much, much, much for the worse. They've taken on what I believe is um, a casino's mindset. A casino's one job is to keep you sitting in that seat.
Speaker 1:Pressing that button, you'll be pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing.
Speaker 4:If the dating apps, they have all of the information of what your interests are in people. A casino's one job is to keep you sitting in that seat pressing that button. You're going to be pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing. If the dating apps, they have all of the information of what your interests are in people and they have all the information of what everyone else's interests are, and so they could really effectively match people together and go. I know that Sam's going to like Mikey and Mikey's going to like Sam. I'm going to put them together, but what they really do is they go. Andrew is Sam's type, but Andrew isn't interested in Sam, so we're going to show Sam Andrew and Sam's going to be like yeah, this guy's exactly my type and you're going to like me, but you're not my type, and so you don't get a match with me. How do you fucking say that? I?
Speaker 3:know that I'm your type. Yeah, you fully are You're absolutely.
Speaker 4:Let's flip the script. But what it means is that you're seeing this light at the end of the tunnel, these beautiful people, but you're not matching with them, so you're not getting what's called high quality matches, hqms. What you're getting is low quality matches, where it's people that you're kind of like, ambivalent about. They might be ambivalent towards you, and the conversation doesn't go anywhere. And what happens to you, the user, is you internalize in your head that you're not successful in the dating world, these conversations going nowhere. You're not matching with anyone that's really attractive. You're not in the stratosphere of the people that you like and definitely it definitely makes sense, because they want to keep you there exactly because if you're not getting high quality matches, you're not dating that person.
Speaker 4:Long term means you're going back onto the app and what you see is there's a lot of. I said there was that big split of lots of straight men, very few straight women. The straight men are spending money hand over foot on things like roses, on Hinge, on things like the subscription on Tinder, on things like Bumbles whatever the subscription is called on that because they think it's going to increase their chances of matching with people. It's a tax on loneliness and they are creating the loneliness. So people are saying no, People say ah that's good.
Speaker 4:So that is the landscape right now of dating apps. This relates directly to me, to bring it to how we talk from our own personal experience. I noticed that I was. Oh also, I did want to say one other thing. Grindr stands a little bit separate to the dating apps in terms of its algorithmic treatment of people. On Tinder, you get served what Tinder wants you to see. You will see someone on your stack to swipe left or right that they've what Tinder wants you to see. You will see someone on your stack just right, left or right, that they've decided they want you to see. On Grindr, when you open it up, you are shown every person in distance order from you. You can't mess the algorithm around with that. Sometimes people can bump themselves up on that list a little bit by paying a bit of extra money. No one really does it, because that's a bit tragic.
Speaker 1:But in general, when you open up grinder.
Speaker 4:You are served every single person around you, and so they. I think in a way grinder is a little bit more money grabbing because their subscription services are a lot more expensive, but they're kind of more moral in that they're going you'll find what you find, what I found. To relate it back to myself, I think that's only fair for you, know you guys. Yeah, we deserve it. We, we used to get burnt at the stake you guys have been oppressed for a long time.
Speaker 3:You, just like we, deserve one app. It's an immoral free app, yeah Well it's still pretty scuzzy the app.
Speaker 4:Is it really restrict what you can do if you don't pay for it? Quit Grindr and I quit the dating apps. The only one I kept was field, which is, for like, sexually adventurous, because I found people on there were a little bit more high quality, a bit more friendly. But I got rid of the other ones because I noticed what was happening to me was I was really equating my own self-worth heavily with how many messages I would get on Grindr or how many matches I was getting on Tinder, and if I'd have a low ebb where I wasn't getting many, I would on tinder, and if I'd have a low ebb where I wasn't getting many, I would start to feel, oh, there's something wrong with me. I need to take better photos of myself. I don't know why I'm not presenting this great version of andrew I'm. You know I'm not good enough. And I noticed myself touching on that mentally and I went ah, I don't think I can like think my way out of this one. So actually I just need to can the apps?
Speaker 4:I need to give my brain a break and I've been on grinder pretty consistently for like five years. So, um, obviously I have not found love on grinder. I don't think I'm missing out much by taking a couple months off. So I've taken a nice little hiatus and I'll say it's been a productive time. It's been very good I've. I've enjoyed the break. I don't think my life has been lowered in quality because of it. Uh, it also takes away like the nervous tick of going and like opening up grinder and seeing who's around. Or I would be out at a club and you know I get like one pill in myself and I'm like who's on grinder? I'm into it where I would take my mind out of the space that I'm in, which is a fun party with friends, and put it into this like I'm gonna.
Speaker 3:I want to fuck.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly right now so that's been my experience on dating apps. I'm sorry, I really everyone. That was a nice monologue. I could have pre-recorded that whole speech.
Speaker 3:Maybe you should have just done it last week.
Speaker 4:Anyway, I'd like to hear from yourselves your experiences.
Speaker 3:I used to play the dating apps like Pokemon, like when I was like a lot younger Um and then also did the whole southworth thing and matches um just started thinking of the jigglypuff song. Is he a pokemon?
Speaker 2:I match with lots of jigglypuff stuff, um, um.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I did the exact same thing you did, like the whole southworth thing. But then I traveled and saw the world and like met people in real life. And then when I came back I've definitely told the story before, but I was learning german, so I was trying to like go on dates with german speakers and then just other people who I found interesting, because I found like naturalized traveling I met a lot of interesting people just by happenstance and I kind of lost that, um, I lost the need to uh be in a relationship or trying to find a relationship, and I sort of like changed my whole thought about it. I I was like I'll get to meet someone new who's outside of my friend group and we'll get to have a conversation and maybe it'll go somewhere. Maybe it'll not, maybe I'll learn some German.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, yeah, reframing is a really good way to look at it, to take it away from that.
Speaker 3:You just get to meet a person. You know if they're not trying to sexually fucking abuse you by the sound of it or kill you Like, so I mean and that's like I've been what with Chloe almost three or four years now. So that was um back then and I mean I never had like any really negative experiences. But that's easy for me to say, cause I'm a man and I'm a scary man.
Speaker 4:I would I would think most of the three of the four were women. Having that experience. Yeah, I really like that reframing idea, intentionality. We talk about it a lot on the podcast, about how it's useful, but if you're going in with the intention of finding love on a dating app, I think you're going to be disappointed with the outcome. It also puts a lot of pressure on someone that you've never met before. Generally, people used to date outside their sorry, within their friend group. So you would start a relationship of a friendship with someone and it would blossom into something more. What people are trying to recreate with dating apps and first dates from these dating apps is an entire two-year friendship built in to them, moving on to a like a relationship, and generally what you see is people go head in too fast or or skim too far off.
Speaker 3:They just don't know how to get that middle ground and, yeah, I found it such a cool way to meet new people and like heaps like I went on heaps of dates when I came back from germany, like so many, like I was like a serial dater but like heaps of them didn't eventuate to anything and I didn't fucking care I wonder how many hearts you broke. Yeah, actually one time I did care and I got fucked and I was sick for a long time Love sick. Yeah, that's sweet, but that only happened once.
Speaker 4:It only has to happen once, and then your body goes no more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then I found Chloe not long after that actually.
Speaker 4:That's good.
Speaker 3:But I didn't meet her on an app. Oh, how did you meet her? No, no, no. She was doing lights in a club and she'd done all these sculptures and I was like I thought the sound guy had done it, Cause I didn't know the lighting was a job.
Speaker 3:I was like Rolly, did you do all of this? He's like no man. Chloe did, and I saw Chloe and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and I sat down and I said to that my friend, who was a piano player I was like I'm gonna get her a number after this and then she was working, so she disappeared and I was like shit and then I messaged one of the musicians who was playing. I got her number and just messaged her.
Speaker 2:I love that the chase that's so cute, nice old school.
Speaker 4:It is old school. I like that. That's very sweet. You going, I pick her as well.
Speaker 3:But I actually wouldn't have had the confidence to do that if I hadn't been doing all the sort of meeting and dating people like if I was like in the phase I was, when I was like 19, 20 years old, I think I would not have had the confidence to do that because I it needed to be all like sort of um, pre-arranged, pre-organized on this like dating app where I felt like it needed to be in this scenario but also life is always that scenario you can always pretty much go up and talk to someone, yeah, and say hello you know, you can always as well go up to someone and flirt with them and ask them out.
Speaker 4:The worst that happens is often. They know.
Speaker 3:Generally people are very flattered by the fact that you've come oh my god, yeah, you say a nice thing, people love that shit I feel like that doesn't happen often enough. People just don't fucking be creepy, obviously.
Speaker 4:You can be creepy.
Speaker 3:A little. No, Andrew, you're always creepy.
Speaker 4:Stop it, Mikey. What about yourself?
Speaker 2:no-transcript. I well, no, that's not. That's not my experience, but I did swipe on um, on a, on a on a man who has now been with my friend for like five years.
Speaker 3:What Recently? No, no.
Speaker 2:So we got my friend Wendy onto a dating app for one night only, when we were absolutely hammered.
Speaker 3:I was there.
Speaker 2:No, you were, we were in Bondi. Oh, a different time. Yeah, yeah and um, they've been together for five years, wow.
Speaker 4:That's my only success. Wait, but you swiped for your friend on this. Yeah, we were doing it together. I was like I remember this one Bang, one wendy. Oh, that's been banging ever since. Yeah, wow, yeah, I don't think how's you have you had much?
Speaker 2:success on there. You said you had some good ones, oh, like back in the day, but maybe when it was less seedy, do you think it was? Maybe less like it was.
Speaker 4:It's always been a bit seedy yeah, but there was like a wild west period where they were kind of just throwing everyone at you on your stack and that was when people had the most chance, because it's this random like mix of people, but now, because they're like gerrymandering, who sees who?
Speaker 2:I don't think I'm the target market for Sydney, so I doubt I would have much success. But back in Auckland it was a good time. But I yeah I don't know if the Sydney scene is for me- that's fair, that's fair. I feel like it's a different crowd. It could just be me in Mr Negative pants, but I feel like I am basically a lesbian.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's sweet.
Speaker 2:I need to meet a nice lesbian.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay.
Speaker 4:We can make that happen. If you're a nice lesbian, write in. Mikey wants to convert you and himself. We can have wonderful years of not sex.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, petting your cats, but we can vote with the same values yeah, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4:Anyway, that was my rant, that was my kind of complaint, yeah it's a.
Speaker 3:It's a very interesting one and like also something cool to bring up, because it's something I obviously haven't thought about in a long time, but I think clearly a lot of people are still thinking about it.
Speaker 4:Yeah I would recommend, if you're having a struggle in dating apps, delete them completely. Delete your accounts. Try a month off. Also, when you make a new account, they're like like a casino. The machines near the entrance of casinos pay out more to get you to come in and continue gambling. When you make a new account, they serve you all the best shit because they're like we want you to see the success you could have and then they rip the rug out, but for those first, like two weeks, oh my God, heaven.
Speaker 2:Or depression if no one's messaging you.
Speaker 4:Oh, the depression is real as well. The drop off that cliff is steep all the potential.
Speaker 3:No messages, oh thank you so much for listening to wb. Well, basically, if you want to find andrew, you can find him at the bear back investor. If you want to find mike, you can find him always. So, mike, if you want to find me, you can find me. Obviously. Send website. Oh, my goodness, I tried to do it too fast and I failed. Wwwwellbasicallypodcom. It's a website. It's green, it has stuff on it.
Speaker 4:No dating app yet, but the one is coming to us. Oh yeah, the one.
Speaker 3:Let's workshop that yeah.
Speaker 2:I hooked up with a guy who went on a US dating show once.
Speaker 3:Oh really.
Speaker 2:It was called Finding Prince Charming.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Interesting. I have quite a chicken history actually. Why did we?
Speaker 2:not talk about that at all.
Speaker 4:And someone else who was on a different reality TV show Next week we're going to talk about reality TV, I think why don't we not go into it? And someone else who was on a different reality TV show Next week we're going to talk about reality TV?
Speaker 3:I think we should, because that's all Chloe watches. Oh my God, chloe not only watches the shows, she plays the mobile games.
Speaker 4:Oh, queen, I love that. I'm so for that.
Speaker 3:She's playing she's playing uh uh emily in paris oh, is there a mobile game for emily?
Speaker 4:in paris wow, I'm gonna get that tonight and like.
Speaker 3:And the other one is like what too hot to handle or whatever, and she's like, done herself up in it to look like herself. And then she's always talking to dudes. I'm like who the fuck is that guy? Who the fuck is that guy? I don't even know that existed, and neither did I. It's weird. Well, basically, I was like play Mario, it's way better, that's it.