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.
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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!
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