Wednesday, 28 February 2018

Bottled Up for a Week - the Messages



My last two posts on this topic can be found here:
Bottled Up for a Week - Intro and Sending
Bottled Up for a Week - Receiving

So you can live through what I lived there, below is a list of all the messages I recorded, as well as my comments on why I accepted or rejected them. As I knew I'd be uninstalling the app, on the last day (days are separated by black lines), I recorded whether I would have accepted or rejected them, but rejected them all so someone else could get them.

I mentioned in my last post what worked, and here's a small summary of what didn't work (for me, personally):

  • short, "nothing" messages, like, "Hi", or just emojis, without something captivating in their bio
  • quotes / song lyrics, without any explanation for why they chose to put that in their message
  • messages that sounded desperate / overly clingy, e.g.
    • Friends means life .........can u be my life :) :)
    • I love you so much (heart emoji)
    • Hey I would love to yours till you disown me ! and Then !!! I would still be yours till I disown myself ! And then !!! I am yours forever
  • messages telling me that I'm beautiful / amazing, which they can't possibly know, because we haven't met yet
The above picture is a word cloud of all the messages I received.

Below is a word cloud of all of my responses.


I couldn't find a nice way to format all the messages, so I'll just link to a Google sheets spreadsheet instead:


Just as a reminder, before you criticise my decisions and say you would have accepted people I rejected, this is my own personal preference for the kind of people I enjoy talking to.

Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Bottled Up for a Week - Receiving


(This is quite long, so if you only want to know what I think worked, there's a TL;DR at the end.)

As I mentioned in my last post on the app Bottled, I started recording the messages I received in the app, and added some comments about why I chose to toss or keep the bottle (which I'll post in my next post, with names redacted). Why did I want to do this? Mostly because I've heard from my male friends that it's ridiculously hard to meet someone as a male on a dating app like Tinder. I wanted to see what it was like (though Bottled is not a dating app!), but I also wanted to see if I could narrow down what kind of messages were more or less successful.

Please do not take this as a generalisation on what a good message looks like! This is what I personally found worked / didn't work. Different people are going to prefer different styles of messages, so it really depends on what you are looking for. I was looking for someone to chat with to learn about new cultures (as I am married), but I tried to keep a dating mindset in the back of my mind while doing this, for the sake of this experiment. Personally, there's not much difference to me when it comes to someone I enjoy talking to, and someone I'd want to date.

Also, keep in mind that other than choosing an age range and a gender preference (and a country if you buy a specific item), you can't choose who your message goes to. So it's not like people were picking me because I had a super gorgeous photo up or anything like that.

I also incorrectly thought that people seeking friendship would only get matched with other people seeking friendship, and I was completely wrong - it seems that the app will match you with people from any setting.

When it came to replying, I tried to keep a few things in mind. A lot of my friends complained that the burden of conversation mostly fell to the guy. He had to come up with a witty opening, if the conversation died, he had to pick it back up, and more often than not, if the girl did open with a message first, it would just be "hey", so the burden still remained on his side (if he also replied with, "hey", the conversation would be left to languish). I tried my best to hold up my share of the conversation burden, despite being horribly cringeworthy and overly perky.

I only started recording messages partway through the first day, but of the four messages I recorded, I kept three of them. At this stage, nobody had kept my bottles, so I had nobody to chat with. Other than the guy who asked for nudes, I kept all the bottles that I received. Of particular note was A_France_26_M_Pirate (I've given nicknames to all the people I'll mention in detail, so you can cross reference with my giant spreadsheet tomorrow, the first character is the first letter of their username, the second part is their country, the third their age (if they specified it), the fourth is their gender, and the last is what kind of hat they chose to wear).

A_France_26_M_Pirate had a very generic nothing message, "Im lonely on that beach... Would you join me to talk a bit ?", and I don't remember anything noteworthy in his bio, but I mentioned I played computer games. Despite the time difference, he replied almost instantly and we had a conversation going. It probably helped that we had a lot in common, so the conversation flowed quite easily. Being a pirate, he hinted that he wanted to see pictures of me, but I made it 100% clear that there was no chance of that. He didn't seem to mind, and never brought it up again.

At this stage, I was trying to keep every bottle I received, except the ones where the person asked not to (e.g. only keep this if you want to sext / be my girlfriend), or I didn't understand the message. I very quickly built up a series of conversations, and the bottles didn't stop coming.

I didn't expect my conversation with D_Serbia_20_M_Pirate to pan out, but when I saw that his profile picture was a picture of Snoop Dogg, that opened up the conversation. I started to have a pretty intense conversation with R_UnitedKingdom_36_M_Pirate about MMOs, with c_Germany_blank_M_Pirate about food, D_Egypt_23_M_Sailor about The Godfather, and I was still talking to Receiver#1 about management games. 

I think what helped these conversations flow were:
  • we had common interests we could talk about
  • most of the responses were fairly in-depth, so it wasn't just something like:
    Me: Do you think Don Corleone was a bad guy in the end?
    Him: No

    Instead, he spoke about the nuances of the characters, and we were able to have some back and forth discussion.
  • the conversations weren't heavily one-sided, with one person asking all the questions or one person doing all the talking. It felt like both people were engaged in the conversation, and both people were participating equally.
  • the conversations I enjoyed more were light and funny, but even the ones that weren't were interesting, with the other person wanting to share things about themselves, and learn things about me.
Pretty soon, my good intentions crumbled, and I started filtering bottles where I felt the person put in a low amount of effort: message was just "hi", or some text copy+pasted from a song / famous quote. I felt pretty terrible about it, as I still remembered that feeling of having my bottle rejected, but I justified it to myself by saying that it's better that I have fewer quality conversations than many low-quality conversations.

Not long after, my principles crumbled even further. Since I do have a full time job (believe it or not), I left bottled for before work and before bed (with the exception of A_France_26_M_Pirate who I ended up adding on Discord and messaging throughout the day). Trying to balance reading new messages, with keeping up active conversations, with trying to get some sleep became incredibly difficult. So my criteria for keeping bottles went up. Bottles that I would have kept had I seen them earlier in my journey were being tossed back into the ocean. I became scathingly critical of people's bios(which makes me a huge hypocrite, because in the entire time I was using the app, I never uploaded a photo of myself, nor filled out my bio).

I couldn't keep up. I'd go to bed with 20 bottles still in my queue, and eventually dread opening the app again, because I'd feel bad seeing even more bottles waiting. At this point, I decided it wasn't worth it, and said I'd continue until the end of the week for the sake of this experiment, but I'd uninstall the app after that. For my last day with the app, I noted down all the bottles I would have kept, and wrote the reason why, but tossed them all back into the ocean for someone else to find.

Personally, I hated those messages that said things like, "You're beautiful and amazing, don't let anyone tell you otherwise." You know nothing about me, how could you possibly say something like that and mean it? I can see that they're just trying to be positive, but it just felt fake to me.

A common complaint I see on reddit is from guys saying, "Why don't women just respond and give us a chance? It doesn't take any effort, and they might end up finding someone they connect with." I can understand that sentiment, and if I had received A_France_26_M_Pirate's message on day 2, he would have been rejected and I would have missed out on many great conversations. 

But now I have an understanding of the other side of the coin - it is impossible to maintain existing conversations and also go through the sheer number of new messages, and have some semblance of a life. It took me over an hour to filter through my new messages each day (and I didn't even do all of them). To some extent, I was almost relieved to see a message asking for pics, because it meant I could reject it without having to mull over whether or not I wanted to start a conversation. Plus, some of the conversations were hard to keep up, and so there was also the aspect of weighing up the risk of getting someone who would be a drag to talk to.

I tried, I really did. Every time I tossed one of those borderline messages into the ocean, I pictured one of my single, male friends saying, "F@#$ you, why didn't you give me a chance?" (even though none of them would). I can understand why these apps are stressful now, and I didn't even get any dick pics, and barely any requests for nudes.

Stats

Number of bottles received

170

Hat distribution

-->

#%
Sailor4325.29411765
Treasure Hunter4023.52941176
Pirate8751.17647059

Gender distribution

-->

#%
Male15490.58823529
Female169.411764706

Country

-->

#%
India4526.471
France169.412
United States105.882
Germany74.118
Morocco74.118
Brazil63.529
Egypt63.529
Portugal63.529
Turkey63.529
Canada52.941
Netherlands42.353
Russia42.353
United Kingdom42.353
Pakistan31.765
Sri Lanka31.765
Switzerland31.765
Iraq31.765
Algeria21.176
Belgium21.176
Finland21.176
Italy21.176
South Africa21.176
Argentina10.588
Austria10.588
Bangladesh10.588
China10.588
Ghana10.588
Greece10.588
Hungary10.588
Indonesia10.588
Japan10.588
Mexico10.588
Moldova10.588
Poland10.588
Romania10.588
Serbia10.588
Singapore10.588
Spain10.588
Sweden10.588
Thailand10.588
Tunisia10.588
United Arab Emirates10.588
Uruguay10.588
Vietnam10.588

Age range

-->

#%
17-204124.11764706
21-255632.94117647
26-304023.52941176
31-35148.235294118
36-4084.705882353
41-4510.5882352941
46-5021.176470588
51-5500
56-6000

Result

-->
#%
Kept4727.64705882
Tossed11970
Reported21.176470588


TL;DR What worked?


Messages that made it easier to reply to were a lot more likely to be kept. Ask an open-ended question, or list some of your interests.

Messages that explicitly stated what you wanted made it easier to decide how to respond. If you only want something sexual, say it outright. You may have a lower response rate, but at least you know if someone responds, they're going to give you what you want, which will save you time in the long run.

Again, I'll say I'm a hypocrite for saying this, but put something in your bio! There were some messages that I was going to reject until I read their bio and found something to connect with.

Monday, 26 February 2018

Bottled Up for a Week - Intro and Sending


I saw Bottled in the Google Play store, and it sounded interesting. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I tried the app Hello Talk, where you specify the language(s) you speak, and the language you are trying to learn, and it lists people who are the opposite, so you can help each other lean a new language. My French vocabulary was tiny, so most of the conversations died after I told them that I live in Australia and I want to learn to speak French. I did learn some cool things about Nice and Marseilles, and I met a really nice guy from Canada who shared cooking photos with me.

I wanted to give Bottled a shot, because it would remove the language barrier, and still let me learn things about people from other cultures. How the app works is that you write a message and put it in a virtual bottle to send to someone random. You can specify the preferred gender and age range for your recipient, and there's an item that lets you pick a country, but that's about all you can control with regards to who gets your bottles.


You can also customise your profile, firstly by defining what you want to get from the app. There are three types of hats you can wear, Sailor (Here to make friends, discover new cultures, learn and share), Treasure Hunter (Roaming the Oceans, searching for the rare gem, your special someone), and Pirate (Here for fun, not really knowing what you are looking for, but always with good intention). I chose Sailor, and I didn't realise that you could still get matched with Treasure Hunters and Pirates, despite being only a sailor. I also goofed and confused the pirate hat with the treasure hunter hat for the first couple of days.


Once you receive a bottle, you can decide to release it for someone else to find, or keep it, which opens a chat window with the sender and you can exchange messages. To help lure people in, you can edit your bio to add more information, as well as add a photo, however, unless the person has a telescope, the photos are tiny.

To prevent spam, you get a treasure chest every couple of hours, which has the chance to contain a bottle of rum. These bottles are emptied and used to send out your messages. Someone I met said that you can get about 20-30 bottles per day if you're on it all the time (you can only have a max of two chests at a time, so you need to keep opening the app to open your chests). The devs also started that you'll only receive a bottle if you've been on in the last 24 hours.

There's a reputation system in the game, and you get 1 point every time someone keeps one of your bottles. You can also gift people items which gives them more points. You start with 20 rep, and it's displayed on your profile. If your reputation gets too low, you can get banned from the app. I think the only way to lose rep is for people to report your messages. redbeanpork wanted me to report this message, but I thought that would be too mean.



Since I've had a few discussions about dating apps, and what kind of messages / profiles work best, I thought I'd document my adventure in Bottled. It's a lot of information, so I'll break it up over a few posts, and at the end, I'll post a record of all the messages I received (with names redacted), along with my comments about why I rejected / accepted them.

Keep in mind, this is my own personal preference! Don't take my comments as an indication of how everyone else is going to behave. My main intention was to meet new people and learn about different cultures, not to find someone to start a relationship / have sex with. But in my case, it's the same thing, as I can't imagine starting a relationship with someone I can't have a decent conversation with, and I can't imagine having a decent conversation with someone who I don't find interesting.

I tried to err on the side of chatting to people if I was unsure whether or not to talk to them, because a few of my friends have said that being on a dating app as a guy is really tough, since you almost never get matches, and you have to do all the work of initiating conversation. I will go over that a bit more in my next post.

--------------------------

First, I'll start with my adventures in sending messages, since it's nice and short. In total, I sent 4 messages. The app actually gives you a tip saying not to send a message that just says, "Hi", since you're less likely to get a response.

The first message I sent was:

Hi, 
You've received my first bottle! Hopefully it's interesting enough for you to reply. 

I spent far too long thinking of a good username, and then I thought: I've never been an early enough user that I've been able to get a short name.

What's the story behind your username?

It was sent to Mexico. Given the time difference, I didn't expect them to open it any time soon, but I got another couple of empty bottles, and wrote a couple more messages:

If you were washed up on an island and you were dying, what would you write in your bottle?

Hi, 
I'm from Australia, and it's yet another hot night. I'm trying to think what would be an interesting fact to tell someone from somewhere else about Australia, and the best that I can come up with is this: 
We had a Prime Minister called Harold Holt who was lost at sea. In Melbourne, there's a swimming pool dedicated to him. 
What's your interesting fact?

Then I went to sleep.

In the morning, I got a notification saying that my potential Mexican friend had opened my bottle.... and tossed it back into the sea, along to Germany.

To say I was crushed was an understatement. I'd had the app for about 8 hours and I had already been rejected! My other two bottles remained unopened. I did read a few reviews from people saying that they only got a couple of bottles after a week of having the app, so I was pretty surprised when I saw three bottles sitting at my island. I hadn't yet decided to document all the messages at this point, so my first few messages went unrecorded, but I did take a screenshot of one of them:


My 45-year-old co-worker said she still gets stuff like this when she uses dating apps, so I'm unsurprised that I got one. But it was the first time someone outside of a game had asked me for nudes, so that's a milestone, I guess? I don't remember why I rejected the other two bottles.

Considering my failed attempt to captivate anyone's attention, I tried a different tact with my message:

Hi, 
I'm from Australia and I like movies, food and computer games. How about you? What do you like to do to pass the time?

This one ended up getting rejected 3 times, until finally, Receiver#1, a 20-year-old male from France, made my day by opening my bottle.

Hey I'm from France and I like computer games and food just like you do. Moreover I love making good meal for myself and making my own video games.

I was so happy! We messaged back and forth for a bit, and it turns out he also likes management / simulation games. We've both played Cities: Skylines and he recommended a couple of other games for me to try: Rimworld, and Airport CEO, which is kinda scary, because both games are on my Steam wishlist...

He made me incredibly jealous with the food he was eating, and really made me miss being in France. He's currently studying, and also happens to be a writer, though he was doing a class on French literature, and other than Le Petit Prince, I didn't have much to contribute to that discussion. The time difference made it a bit hard to have a flowing conversation, but to be honest, I preferred it that way, as it wasn't a demanding friendship. He'd reply while I was asleep, and I'd reply while he was asleep. It was nice and low-key.

Receiver#1 was the only person to open one of my bottles, but to be honest, after the first day, I didn't really have time to send out any other bottles.

Here's what my screen looked like when I woke up on day 2...


Note: You can't even open the chests when your screen is full of bottles, so I wasn't able to get any new empty bottles anyway...

To be continued!