INSTALMENT EIGHT - AN 'OPEN LETTER' TO FUMBLE

Fumble is not for me, I’m sure that's the vibe I've been giving off  here, so it won't come as any surprise!  But I wanted to tell you all what I don’t get about this app and why...

Perhaps I should be writing to the Fumble CEO/developers about this…?  What a great idea…!!!  Two birds, one stone… 

BMW_up2

Ponniesville

PLANET FUCKING EARTH

R1S 3UP

AN OPEN LETTER TO ‘FUMBLE’

20^th April 2019

Dear Fumble

RE:      THE DERANGED CONCEPT OF YOUR DATING APP WHICH HAS CAUSED ME

A SERIOUS BOUT OF ‘UTTER BEFUDDLEMENT’

I wish to make some observations with regard to your dating app, Fumble.  You can read about all of my experiences of ‘trying to find somebody remotely date-able’ using your app here if you are interested enough to do so…I had the ‘decency’ to try out your dating app which I knew would be a shit show…and as you are promoting shitty behaviour, really Fumble, you owe it to those deluded enough to believe your marketing-hype and as a result download and use your app to actually read about their experiences.  This is so that YOU as a ‘responsible dating forum’ can get a full grasp of the kind of dating experience YOU are encouraging…well, as I've said, my experiences are all catalogued and ready to be read...
...here, Fumble...HERE!

It was with immense trepidation that I signed up to Fumble because I just couldn’t believe that I would find a ‘decent-non-entitled-man’ who wanted a relationship with a woman willing to ‘chase’ him from the get-go based upon a lame 100 character ‘About Me’ intro (if he could be arsed to write one that is), and a below par photograph of him kissing a 6ft pineapple.  And two weeks down the line, I was damn well right.  So I’d like you to consider my views on why your app is shockingly shocking so that you can perhaps…how to put this…yeah, scrap it and start again or take on board a more honest marketing strategy?  You could start by replacing 'liberating for women' to 'detrimental for women' and take it from there. 

First off, women chasing men is not some kind of feminist movement or notion or a path to female liberation.  Loyal a.f. Female Fumble-employees if you're reading this, I hope you aren't lying to yourselves with a thought process akin to…‘…if we as women want something, it's the 21^st century don't you know…we should put ourselves out there and go get it…we shouldn’t be quiet little women waiting around for what we want…so our dating-app-employer is Emmeline Pankhurst so far as we are concerned…’ although I’m still convinced there is a man at the helm…come on Fumble, don’t make me check Wikipedia…!

If we’re talking about a woman wanting a certain job or a position at work or getting on the property ladder or saving up to bag herself a nice holiday in Bali…OH MY GOD…I agree with the Fumble concept 100%…initiate, engage and CHASE that dream and you better kick-ass and land it and then revel in sheer kick-ass liberation.  

But relationships and men; and relationships and women are not possessions.  If you think dating apps such as yours where women HAVE to chase men empowers women well...they DON’T…they actually do the absolute opposite.  What women are doing by entertaining dating forums such as this one is enabling men to treat them like absolute crappy crap all under a misconstrued theory of what 'liberation' is…and Fumble, come on, you already KNOW this. 

Women chasing men is NOT Feminism at play or liberation in action.  It's a car crash.  There is a reason why ‘Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus’ (credit to Mr John Gray) is a bestseller and that’s because it is bloody well spot on.  Men and women are different.  Men are like flamingos and women are like gazelles – we are a different species within a species.  And generally the two difference species are attracted to opposite characteristics and opposite traits... 

Without getting too y’know text-booky Fumble, I don’t want to confuse you…but Feminism is the advocating of women’s social, political and economic rights so as to obtain equality between the sexes…; I learnt that in basic GCSE Sociology…but I just can’t ever imagine my sociology teacher (who was an ACTUAL Feminist funnily enough) standing at the front of the class boldly claiming that…

‘An example of female liberation can be given as so…women must chase the men they want to date and in doing so equality between men and women in the social-dating forum will be achieved and marriage contracted should the woman chase the man into such a contract’.  

Oh my God…!  No I definitely cannot imagine those words in that order coming out of my Feminist sociology teacher’s mouth.

The dating app/site market is flooded Fumble, I realise this and your app designers have to think up concepts that are ‘different’ from ALLLLL the others to make it stand apart…and THAT is all this app has been designed for.  It’s one that encourages women to chase men – that's a concept...YES, and it’s also ‘a FIRST’…the designers met the brief - it's a ‘FIRST’ for a reason - IT ABSOLUTELY SUCKS…

You/your app designers don’t appear to care what it’s users do with this idea or how they use this app to treat each other, just as long as they've created a USP and it brings in the dosh.  Fumble, I can tell you, if you think you are 'up there' advocating for women through this forum for ‘social equality’ in actively forcing them to chase men, make the first move on grown ass men…then you REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF 'FEMALE LIBERATION' WHICH IS THE PREMISE UPON WHICH YOU ARE MARKETING THIS APP.  SO THIS LEADS ME TO CONCLUDE THAT YOU ARE EITHER A BIT 'DIM'  OR YOU ARE HOPING THAT YOUR FEMALE FUMBLE USERS ARE.

I just can’t imagine anybody truly thinking that a woman chasing a man to get him to date and ultimately into a relationship or for any other reason for that matter (unless he’s stolen your handbag and even then it’s questionable) is a good idea.  

Ooops…I was just jesting with you Fumble...only joking around, but your stooooopid app is about as liberating and Feminist as encouraging and filming women mud wrestling in their bikinis to win a man's attention…but don’t go getting any ideas Fumble…

...don’t let me find out in the not too distant future that you have added a 'mud wrestling in bikinis' video element to your app so that women Fumblers can entice male Fumblers they are fighting over to view footage of them actually mud wrestling in exchange for a piss-poor text message ‘...you won me then LOL…btw your ass looked great covered in mud’ from that ego-inflated male.

I’ve chased one man in my whole life and that was a disaster - I was young, hormonal and totally clueless…Who else have I chased?  NO ONE...other than the Postman the other day when he thought I wasn't home and about to drive off without delivering my GLOSSY BOX...now HE was worth chasing...he still had my box!

And now because of this Fumble app, I have ‘chased’ six men…SIX DIFFERENT MEN IN THE SPACE OF TWO TO THREE WEEKS, urgggggh, makes me feel SICK…

‘Naz’ – who thought I would still want to get to know him after he offered me his two truths and a sack of shite.  Read about that HERE.

‘Someone’ – I didn’t even want to chase but mistakenly swiped right for.  Read about that HERE.

Boring ‘Tom’ – who wanted me to drive 300 miles to see him and his donkey when he visited my area 3-4 times per week, again, read about this HERE.

‘Mark’ – who I was ‘just larking around’ with and was hoping would have got me blocked just so I could revel in the kudos.  Read about this HERE.

And there were two others that I haven’t really got much to say about, but…

The first one, we’ll call ‘Cameron’ initially seemed decent…until he wanted me to send him a million-trillion pictures before he would properly converse…it was as though a picture got him a bit of battery power to the brain which enabled him to knock out a sentence, but then the conversation would die until he got another photo which gave him a renewed bit of battery life – that’s as far as we got…forget that what attracts me to a man is his sense of humour (which I stated in my 100 CHARACTER??? [FUMBLE: what is THAT about????] ‘About Me’).  He was just focused on getting his needs met – getting as many pics as possible…what for??…YEAH, I KNOW WHAT FOR.  

Boring.  Shit.  Entitled.  He’s seen my picture, I’ve seen his…so let’s y’know see if the important stuff connects…or not!  I’ve got no time for this.  You’re encouraging men to start off being chased and then they expect all their needs to be met before they will even consider the needs of the female Fumbler who is too busy chasing and trying to faciliatate their entitled ego to realise that her needs are definitely NOT going to be met.  EVER.

The other, we’ll call ‘Alastair’ seemed decent, funny-ish, charming BUT…I could tell that this was going to be a bloody ‘text relationship’ – so he got deleted five days in.  Because I am not here looking for a text buddy.  I’ve had one of them and I don’t ever want another one because it’s BORING and I don’t want my phone being roped into the relationship as a go-between-third party.

You see, this is what I think about apps that make women make the first move…

From the profiles I’ve read and the interactions I’ve had and just a general male/female dynamic, there generally has to be a certain type of man that chooses to ‘date’ using this type of app; I’ll generalise and put down some character traits I think are going to be present…top of the list goes, of course,

MEN

•         Entitled.

•         Those with an ATTITUDE who THINK they like being chased, because ‘yeah bitches…we’ve had to do it since time began…so now it’s your turn…let’s turn the tables on YOU lot…’.

•         Those who want an ego boost but don’t want anything more than that.

•         Those who don’t want a relationship but a ‘text’ relationship/ hook up will do just fine.

•         Those with very low self-esteem and are too lazy to work on their communication and dating skills.

WOMEN

•     Enablers.

•     Those who think they are being all ‘Feminist’ and have bought into your ‘liberation marketing shit’ and have a ‘if the man can do the chasing then why shouldn’t I’ attitude.

•     The needy lot.

•     Those happy to respond to breadcrumbs.

•     Those with very low self-esteem who don’t value themselves – and this is the group that I feel sad for – this is the group that get the worst of dating apps like this; these are the people YOU, Fumble, are exploiting.

I’m betting that a good proportion of male Fumbers are not looking for a serious relationship through this app, or if they are they are kidding themselves that they will ever ‘properly date’ let alone marry a lady who initially chases them on a lame-ass dating app…or they are plain entitled arseholes that nobody wants to date…the dating-dregs of dating-app-society.

The general mind-set of a man choosing this type of dating app, knowing that women have to make the first move, is going to be lazy, entitled, and very much…’ok you can start as you mean to go on.  You can start off by chasing and you can continue chasing and whilst you are busy chasing I’ll be looking elsewhere for a woman who knows that she’s worthy of being pursued’.

That man I refer to as ‘Alastair’…he may well have been up for meeting eventually, maybe, perhaps, but he damn well was not going to ask me…I just know that I would have been expected to try to progress each part of the dating process and that for me is just never going to work – it’s a turn OFF.  I lost interest and I lost attraction and he lost my attention.  He was just always waiting on me…I was five days in and he went from a solid 7.5 to a 1.5 – because he was just namby-pambying around. 

I’ll tell you that as an actual liberated woman who has her own place, own mortgage, own car, can finance herself and has never needed or asked a man to buy her things or pay her bills how this app has made me feel; 

‘disposable’, ‘weak’, ‘not good enough’, ‘frustrated’, ‘angry’, 'anxious'‘completely repelled’, 'out of my depth', 'desperate''insulted'

...the list of negative thoughts and feelings goes on.  

The fun, thrill, butterflies and excitement of getting to know someone was absent.  Using your app was a chore - start to finish labour of the sole. 

Chasing men round the Wrekin is a bore.  And when I heard one of your sucky notifications ping it would make me slightly shudder because it was usually a reminder to chase and that time was of the essence and that a Fumbler liked me but I had to fucking guess which one and do this quickly, so I need to start a conversation with him when all he’s bothered to write is his name and age.  

Oh and Fumble, I’m not swiping right on just any profile so that I can find out which person I’m not attracted to is attracted to me…it’s a fucked up mind game and it’s not entertainment.  It’s not what dating should be about.  Just tell me who’s interested in me and that might peak my interest in him a little.  How about that for a novel idea?  Cut the crap.

The ‘excitement’/’pleasure’ of dating which should be there was just replaced with anxiety and the feeling that whatever might start off well was not going to end well.  And this is because if we women are all there chasing men we might like the look of around, how are we ever going to really know if they like us back.  Because women chasing men is not the order of play.  Sorry but it just ain’t.

Women generally find being healthily pursued (and I don’t mean stalked) a nice thing, a romantic thing, a reassuring thing, a feeling ‘safe’ thing.  Being pursued by a man who wants you when you want them is sexy and endearing and fun and wholesome.  It feels like everything is falling into place.

If I was looking for a weak a.f. man, who is going to bring nothing to the table, this dating app would be for me – but that is not what I and other genuinely liberated women who want healthy relationships with real men, men’s-men-type-of-men are looking for.  I’m betting true Feminists and actual liberated women would burn their bras and be willing to be force fed by a tube through their noses before they would ever consider chasing a grown ass man around.

Have a re-think Fumble – go back to the drawing board.  You may be making money…for now…but you ARE NOT promoting healthy dating habits and dynamics…you’re actually worse than the fuckery that is ‘Hinder’ because you are actively encouraging men to become or continue to be ENTITLED at the expense of the mental health of your so called ‘liberated’ female users who are forced to do what is unnatural which is to FLIPPIN WELL MAKE THE FIRST MOVE ON A MAN AND THEN CHASE. 

Fumble, I think you are having a Bumble with THIS app.

             Yours faithfully

             A now fully liberated [after deleting your app] EX-Fumble-user

P.s.  The last ‘About Me’ profile I viewed on Fumble was of one who described himself as ‘intelligent’…only he wrote it like so: ‘intellergent’ – since I really couldn’t be arsed to swipe right just to communicate the unfortunate spelling error to him, could you at least get spellcheck installed so that 'self-proclaimed' intelligent people like this don’t start the ball rolling by making giant pricks out of themselves...although...it could have been a great little 'conversation starter' I suppose...for anyone bowled over by his 'intellergence' and wishing to find out more about this genius.

__________________

And finally, lovely readers…'female liberation' from a social perspective, in its purest and most honest form… 

‘The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character’.  

Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

‘nuff said…intelligence insulted...but App deleted...rant over...point made...blood pressure on its way back to normal...

TOUGH LOVE.EVERY.STEP.OF.THE.WAY