 One of my more embarrassing moments for my teenage years of which there are quite a few starts out with a crush I had on a girl. My friend who knew the girl and who knew me well enough to know that I would never make the first move arranged with the girl that, ui, Anton will be calling over the landline and then got me to call the girl. All of this happened quite fast and since I'm an idiot I basically didn't know what to say to the girl and so I said I'm really sorry for this call our mutual friend forced me into it. In my defense, I meant it more like I would never impose myself talking on you but it came out to the girl more like I didn't want to be talking to her. Napilitan lang ako, which was the exact opposite of how I felt. So in short order, the girl told my friend that I don't think Anton is really into me and my friend called me all upset asking why I went and said a damn full thing like that. Mahirap talaga maging torpe. And this was way back in the day we were still using landlines. Since tech has improved so many things about our lives since then I wonder if it has also improved how to bridge that gap between this is a stranger I want to get to know more to this is someone I'm in a relationship with. Dating was still a place where gender roles were still really traditional. You know men were still expected to pursue women and women had to wait for men to ask them out and all of these things. So she really wanted to switch that on its head by encouraging women on Bumble to make the first move and start the conversation. Let's Lucille, Bumble's communication director for the Asia-Pacific region. Bumble is a dating app and what makes it stand out is that it shifts the power of saying yes to starting a conversation over to the girl. Guys can indicate women they would like to get to know better but a conversation can only start if the girl swipes right on the guy too. So swiping left is a no and swiping right is a yes and then you sort of go about your swiping journey and if someone also swipes right on you then you get matched and in a heterosexual connection between a man and a woman the woman speaks first. On the surface this approach liberates women. A lady's default answer to an advance is no a guy can only start conversing with her if she has swiped right on the guy also and she can't see which guys have swiped right on her. So an admirer is rejected without consequences without the lady being labeled difficult or uptight or as someone who sends mixed signals etc. But it's also very freeing for guys too. Since a consequence of rejection is very minor you just don't hear anything from the person you swiped right on and very private. You weren't turned down saying a noisy bar full of people who could see you getting rejected. Your ego doesn't take a hit. One of the biggest challenges with dating and especially online dating before Bumble was for heterosexual dating was like male aggression and really aggressive first messages very sexualized or very because like what is happening is that men are when they're sort of in that environment they're almost anticipating getting rejected so they are opening a conversation or like opening an interaction in this very aggressive overcompensating manner like dominating kind of way. And I think a lot of the psychology behind that is if I get rejected like I'm almost like playing a character and it's almost like not really me so that then I don't need to like feel that rejection. It wasn't me it was this other persona. Yeah exactly I think a lot of men have that persona in dating because they've been told over and over again that they have to be the aggressor they have to pursue women you know that it's this like you are the predator and the woman is the prey all this like really unhelpful social scripting that we receive. Successful men are like this and then yeah it's all that aggression. This is what a man looks like and he's aggressive and he goes after what he wants and he does all of this and it's like it's just ultimately not true. Now all of this sounds good in theory but does it work in real life? Bumble works really well because as a male it gives I swipe right on them it gives them the option to like me or not and it saves me time. I was actually advised by a good number of people that Bumble would be the option if you're looking for something more serious. And I actually it actually did turn out to be quite true. I did try Tinder but I did notice that whatever matches I have there it seems to see if they were more superficial in what it is they wanted. Let's just put it that way. Yeah Bumble always yielded better quality results. That was mine and Jerry she's based in the Philippines him in the States. They met online through Bumble during the pandemic and now they're engaged. And the low stakes approach of Bumble does seem to have helped the initial contact between them. I just randomly found on the internet and on Bumble and I swipe right and didn't take anything more. I never thought I'd hear from her. And I did. So I really wasn't thinking it through initially. It's quite a commute from the United States. Yes. If you're listening to this as a podcast you didn't see Maan in that last clip lean into Jerry as he discussed how the Philippines is just a little bit far from the States. There's clearly a lot of affection here a genuine connection which literally would not have happened if not for Bumble. The online space is an opportunity to meet people you never would have met otherwise. So a really interesting trend for 2024 is actually around sort of generational romances and people being more open to like age gap relationships and dating someone younger or older than them. And I think that is kind of a natural evolution of being able to access pools of people and assess your compatibility. Whereas when you go out with your friends from school or from uni you kind of stay in your very tight bubbles. And kind of one of the only places that you meet people of more varying ages from you is then in the workplace and that's not always an appropriate dating. Yeah the best place to look for a partner. To get in trouble. Yeah exactly. Whereas online dating platform is very different. That's what people are there for. And the good thing is that you can increase or decrease your age settings on Bumble and just have a look. And the people that you're seeing will are compatible with you're compatible with their age settings. So you're only seeing people that are also interested in dating someone your age. So it's a good way to kind of just like test the waters you know have some different conversations. But of course the online space has its own unique dangers as well. Scammers, toxic behavior unwanted pics of male organs they're called private parts for a reason guys. And so Bumble has invested heavily and worked hard to deal with all of that. To ensure that their users have a quality experience. The main concern from our audience is you know fake profiles and scam accounts. And we know that across all types of social media you know that's an issue online. And so we have built a number of features to protect our users against that. One is photo verification tools. So you can use our photo verification system that's powered by human moderation and AI. That will basically give you you have to go through a series of steps and then it gives you a blue shield to add to your profile that says that you match your photos you're a human being you are who you say you are. It's actually you. Yeah. Yes. So that is um you know and we always say you know match with people that have verified their profile and if they haven't you know you can ask them to verify their profile you know before you start chatting or you can also filter so that you only see people with verified profiles. You know if that is a concern for you I would definitely recommend doing that. And we also have just launched recently on safer internet day a new feature called deception detector which is powered by AI to help detect spam and fraudulent accounts with I believe 99% accuracy which is really fantastic and that is helping us sort of add a sort of shield of protection for our users that removes a lot of scam accounts before they even have the chance to you know match with people and start talking. So that's really important feature for us and that's a that's a most recent development. So the system diligently weeds out undesirable accounts whether they are bots or toxic users but ensuring that both parties have good intentions is just the beginning of a relationship. The rest is of course up to the people involved and if you've ever had to meet someone IRL that you've only ever interacted with online yung first eyeball ninyo kung baga you know it can be a nerve-wracking experience. That's one thing about just meeting someone on the internet you know there's so many things that you miss out you don't know what a person tends to look like like from head down you don't know how tall they are you don't know their big feet you know things like that so so meeting each other the very first time when he landed in the airport you know you really get kabah you know there's nervousness and stuff well you landed like 430 in the morning yes yes you're disheveled when I landed I was like okay we vetted each other I looked her up on on the internet and I'm a teacher so it was easy to find me yeah you know so when I but when I landed in the Philippines the first time I'm like is there gonna be somebody waiting for me yeah yeah or if I just yeah you know it's 430 in the morning and and a relationship is a long-term thing you just don't get over all of your doubts after one meeting in real life so I think our first trip was either anilaw or tagaitay you know so I was driving and then we stopped in S-Lex you know at the gas stations and all so he went down to use the bathroom and then I also went and he started thinking when he was what were you thinking? I was thinking when I come out will she still be there? yeah yeah yeah because my passport she has everything that I own yeah this wallet his cell phone was in the car you know he didn't bring it to the bathroom so he had that moment what am I doing in this strange gas station outside of Manila? I don't know I'm in the middle of nowhere yes yes so you have those funny moments which you normally wouldn't have if you meet the conventional way but yeah but now we don't have those anymore after a year and a half Maan and Jerry did have some concerns unique to a relationship which started out online but as the relationship progressed many of their concerns now sound just like any other couples all long-term couples it seems regardless of how and where they met will end up dealing with something very low-tech paperwork because right now that's one of the biggest impediments that we have it's trying to understand the legal and tax implications on both sides you know how Philippine banks always send you that form and not the sign ask if you have yes yes if you send and you know right? so so those things have made it much more complex for us to move things forward on paper ultimately Bumble and other apps like it is a new way to do an old thing meeting people you might be interested in has always been difficult at least now there are more options available to do that you know there is absolutely you know nothing wrong with being introduced to people that you might be compatible with by your parents or by your family other family members or your friends you know that is how people met each other for centuries before dating apps came along but i think the role that apps like Bumble have to play is you know working in compliment to some of those more traditional practices because you know if you're going one by one to these like in-person meetings from within your sort of family circle there's only so many people that you can realistically meet and they might not all be compatible for you and there is on Bumble access on Bumble to a community of people in your area in your age range you know that you can filter for all sorts of different things so if you're thinking about you know efficiency and access to people it's vastly different and with that efficiency and scope of course comes data while we're all chasing after the same prize love a stable relationship a partner who thinks our quirks are charming instead of annoying the way we chase after that prize can differ greatly based on our backgrounds women in India send a lot more messages you know per match and that indicates that they women in India like to keep conversations on the app you know longer than in some other markets probably because they are you know have a higher standard of you know verifying someone and you know a different environment around safety so they want to make sure that they're keeping the conversation in the app for as long as possible and then like you said Singapore very small market so they are you know looking in a much sort of smaller tighter radius tighter radius exactly right and then in somewhere like the Philippines you have different considerations around filters for example like religion and like thinking about religion and education in both Singapore and Philippines is like quite more pronounced in comparison to a market like Australia you know people are really focused on education and religion as a measure of compatibility which is more elevated than what it is in some other countries but Filipino is also very romantic like in their own in their own way you know but you know they love love so there's also a lot more sort of general sort of enthusiasm I would guess for the process of dating Pinoy's do love love but I mean come on it just really warms the heart when you see two nice people end up together who doesn't get a little sappy over that I I feel the strong connection I mean I'm younger than you guys I'm sure you've had more experience but I feel I feel like this is a really nice pairing I can feel the the genuine affection and of course genuine affection is found in all healthy relationships not just romantic ones and tech which brings potential romantic partners together can also bring potential friends together we also have an app called bundle for friends that is about sort of platonic friend finding and that has been really popular in the Philippines as well and I think that's really great because a lot of people listening might have been like oh but you know I'm in a relationship or I'm not looking for that that relationship but like like we sort of just touched on earlier you know a romantic relationship is only one part of your life and friendship and friendship connection is really important as well and there's a lot of people I think that could do with you know a wider friendship circle and that's what Bumble for Friends is for which brings us back full circle to my earlier story I totally messed up with that girl but I was still grateful to my friend for trying to help me out that was more than 20 years ago but we are still friends to this day and we still communicate fairly regularly he has fortunately stopped chatting me up to girls something I'm sure my wife is thankful for this episode was released on February 14th Valentine's and whether you're celebrating alone in a pair or in a group I hope that your relationship is healthy and that it has genuine affection This is Tech Show but Friendly Hardware Sugar's podcast and I'm your host Anton who you're produced by Nana Nadal Our next episode explores the surprisingly gungho world of seniors learning about tech and that drops February 23 Paming saan may nagtatanong kumikilala ba kami ng computer shop na trusted yung hindi ka lolo kuhin actually meron kami full service PC store ang hardware sugar nagwabenta kami ng PC components nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs we clean computers kasama na rin yung excellent table management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning we also clean and repaste GPUs na sa makati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site www.hwsugar.ph na 100% palaging up to date yung inventory dun kung instock yung item sa amin available yun sa site we also ship nationwide thanks 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