INTRODUCTION

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good set of shirtless mirror selfies, must be in want of a woman who will ask him about birds and then never speak to him ever again.

Bumble is an app that brands itself as “the feminist dating app.” Users still swipe on each others’ profiles, selecting mates based on appearance and bios, but in heterosexual matches, the woman has to make the first contact. This format is probably better for women who are trying to avoid skeezeballs, but more importantly, it allows me to conduct large scale polls of random dudes on the internet so that I can prove that reptiles are actually super rad.

METHODS

Using my real identity, I set up a Bumble profile. I added a few pictures of myself and set my bio to read, “swipe right if you like taking polls.” I then swiped right on every profile I saw and messaged every match the same question.

The question was deceptively simple:

Birds or reptiles?

On its face, it should be apparent that I’m asking them to choose which they prefer. But the question remains open-ended, somewhat unclear in scope, and taxonomically fraught, allowing me to reap a wide diversity of answers. In total, I surveyed 153 guys. Screenshots of the conversation are shown here, but names have been changed with the aid of a random name generator, and pictures have been concealed. You may note that the colors of the chat bubbles reverse between images. It’s a bug in the app and has nothing to do with anything.

I also established a control group in order to understand if the behaviors I observed were specific to dating apps, or if they would manifest themselves in normal, real life people. My control group, admittedly, is not a good representation of normal people. They are overwhemingly materials scientists who are less Californian than the Bumble guys. However, they’re around the same age and were unable to escape when I hijacked our conversations to ask them if they preferred birds or reptiles, so I’ll take what I can get. In total, I surveyed 30 people in real life, 15 of whom are men who are attracted to women (MAW). (social scientists, if there is actually a word for this, then whoops)

I did not secure IRB approval for this study pls don’t tell anybody

RESULTS

Figure 1. Proof that MAWs don’t know anything

The results, in short, are disappointing.

While anybody with a teaspoon of good taste would obviously pick reptiles, birds beat reptiles on bumble 2 to 1. Please take a moment to let this travesty sink in.

The popularity of birds among bumble men may be a symptom of straight dude-ness. The straight dudes in my IRL survey liked birds even more than the bumble dudes, while the rest of my responders actually preferred reptiles.

Only 70% of bumble dudes who responded were able to answer the question (95% confidence interval 63% — 77%). In contrast, 80% of my control group was easily able to choose (CI 66% — 94%). Could the environment of online dating encourage people to overthink the simplest of questions? WHO KNOWS

THE DINOSAUR ISSUE

As I mentioned, my question is taxonomically fraught. Put simply, both reptiles and birds as we know them are descended from dinosaurs, and birds are a subgroup of reptiles. Although David Attenborough has no problem understanding that we have a colloquial understanding of reptiles outside of this sticky business, some of the participants got trapped, unable to conceive of a world where you had to compare a subset to its much larger set.

26 men brought up dinosaurs, with varying levels of understanding of the taxonomic complexities. Out of the 26 men who brought up dinosaurs, only 8 were able to ultimately make a choice. Two chose reptiles.