Hi Everyone!
Here’s the next installment of my online dating chronicles. If you missed any of the previous parts, click the link(s) below!
Part 1: It Started One Night At A Bar Named ‘Darling’…
Part 2: The One Where Jen Swiped Right
Part 4: Dipping My Toe In The Water
Part 6: There’s Something Fishy Going On…
Part 7: Heeere, Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!!!
Part 8: Dobby Has No Master. Dobby Is A Free Elf!
Today, I’ll be writing about how the apps Coffee Meets Bagel and OK Cupid work. So, it’s more of an informational post again like Part 4 was for POF. Both apps had a similar setup where you complete a sentence for your profile. For example, Coffee Meets Bagel said “I appreciate when my date…” and you choose to fill it out. A few guys wrote that they appreciate when their date puts down the phone. I find this sad that they have to say that. I think what most people mean when they say to put the phone away is don’t scroll through Instagram or constantly be checking your phone for texts from your friends to tell them how the date is going. But, out of respect, even when I’m with friends, I rarely have my phone out. Of course, this can be a bad thing too. One time I went to a late movie after work with a friend and we grabbed bubble tea after the movie (which I told my parents, but I guess they didn’t hear me). My parents got worried when I wasn’t replying to their texts and wasn’t home by midnight (I had work early the next day and I was planning to make holiday cookies for my coworkers, so they expected I would be home at a reasonable time). Note to self- get verbal confirmation from parents that they know what’s happening and maybe just check my phone and send a text once it gets late.
Coffee Meets Bagel
I thought this was a funny name. They chose the name because grabbing coffee is an easy first date and then ‘bagel’ because they launched the app in New York. Surprisingly, I came across one of my classmates’ older brothers on the app. I was only on the site for a day so that I could get matches, just to see how it worked.
Coffee Meets Bagel was kind of interesting because you fill out info like you do on Tinder. If you’re a female seeking a male, every day at 12pm, you are sent your ‘daily bagels.’ The daily bagels are guys who have liked you. So, it’s similar to having the paid version of the other apps. It shows you who already likes you and you can decide whether you like them back and if you do, they can message you. So, in a way, Coffee Meets Bagel is a mix of several apps because the girl (like Bumble) is the one to make the decision whether the guy can message you or not. It’s like if you were swiping on Tinder, and you were only shown profiles of the guys who already liked you. The one difference for Coffee Meets Bagel is that you are only shown a handful (about 10 or so?) of guys.
Each day at noon, guys will receive up to 21 quality matches – known as “Bagels”. They are given the option to either LIKE or PASS. Then, Coffee Meets Bagel will curate the best potential matches for women among the men who expressed interest.
Women will choose who gets to talk to them among quality men who already liked them. That’s right. No more guessing games!
Users also earn or can pay for coffee beans, which unlock special features like finding out who the mutual friends of your match (when connected to Facebook) are or giving a match a second chance.
It almost felt like this app was more for professionals. The ones who work a lot and don’t have a lot of downtime to swipe through tons of people.
OK Cupid
For OK Cupid, it was similar to POF where you fill out your info (you choose which ones you want to fill out):
- Sexual Orientation
- Gender
- Height
- Build (Body type)
- Ethnicity
- School
- Religion
- Whether you smoke, drink or do drugs
- If you eat meat or not (i.e. Omnivore)
- whether you have kids/if you want them
- Horoscope Sign
You can also say if you speak a second language and choose whether religion is important.
Then, you fill out a self-summary (bio) and you can choose a selection of drop-down questions to fill out. You know when you have to choose from a drop-down list of questions when you’re filling out security questions for the bank or something and there’s a few choices for each question? That’s how OK Cupid is set up. Some of the questions include:
- What I’m doing with my life
- Favourite book, tv show, movie, music, food
- You should message me if…
- I’m really good at…
- The first thing people notice about me is…
- I spend a lot of time thinking about…
In addition to filling these questions out (whether you choose to or not), you are given a series of questions on different topics and based on your answers, you are matched with people based on whether they answered the questions in the same way. You get a match percentage and an enemy percentage. The enemy percentage is based on how you answered the questions and if they answered slightly different, then your enemy percentage goes up. It doesn’t base the match percentage on your interests, it bases it on how you answered a series of questions that ask you about dating, sex, ethics, politics, etc. I didn’t know this when I signed up, I thought matches were based on interests, but it’s based on the series of questions you answer.
You are asked a question and then you choose what answers you would accept from a potential match. Then, you choose the importance of the question.
- Do spelling mistakes annoy you?
- Yes
- No
- Answer I’ll accept:
- Yes
- No
- Importance
- A little
- Somewhat
- Very
If you chose both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ for ‘answers I’ll accept,’ they mark it as irrelevant and don’t count it in your questionnaire. So, if you chose that spelling mistakes do annoy you and then a potential match said no, then your enemy percentage goes up.
Luckily, you can look at how you both answered the questions to see which questions your answers were different. This is useful because you can see which answers matter to you.
They even had some logic questions like whether the Earth or Sun is bigger and “Half of all policemen are thieves and half are murderers. Does it follow logically that all policemen are criminals?” This type of question is called a syllogism (which I just found out). “A syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.” It reminded me of Orphan Black when they ask the Castors and Helena those questions.
All mangoes are golden. Nothing golden is cheap. Conclusion: All mangoes are cheap…
Helena: Where are these mangoes?… I would like to see these mangoes.
Haha, gotta love Helena. Always thinking about food. Same, girl.
I feel like OK Cupid is more for people looking for a long-term relationship and you can see if your values and way of thinking is similar by using the questionnaire.
For the last installments of this blog series, I’m going to share my final thoughts on online dating. I’ll let you know which apps to join depending on what you’re looking for, and offer some tips to the guys out there on what would make me swipe right. Also, I’ll share some of the reactions I had while swiping.
Love,
*This blog series is not affiliated or associated with any of the online dating sites/apps mentioned. It is also not meant to discourage any person from using these sites. This was just something I thought would be a fun topic to write about and let you know about my experiences with online dating.