I spent a week on Bumble BFF to see if I could find a new best friend, and it was surprisingly encouraging.
To clarify, I didn’t try out Bumble’s BFF setting because I don’t have great friends. I can’t trip on UNC’s brick paths without an acquaintance seeing me — some of my friends from high school came to UNC, and I have made lifelong friends during my time in Chapel Hill.
But I’m a senior, and most likely my best friends right now will not be five minutes away from me this time next year. I am looking at jobs across the country, and I can’t help but worry about how I’m going to make friends wherever I settle in the future.
So, I decided to do what 21-year-olds do when they don’t know how to do something themselves — I downloaded an app.
I downloaded an app for a week to practice making a new best friend.
I heard about Bumble from a few friends about a year ago, but I had no idea what to expect from their “BFF” setting. I started by crafting my profile, an activity that took a shameful amount of time.
As a straight woman, it felt strange crafting an online profile that only other women were going to see, and even though I was making a friendship profile, I still experienced fear of other users judging me. I worried that the other women on the app wouldn’t think my photos were pretty or my bio was cool, and that caused me to sit staring at a blank bio section for 20 minutes. Big-time shoutout to housemates who help us make online profiles.
After a little too long, I settled on this.