The Ben Shapiro Show - August 18, 2026


Bumble Just Admitted Its Big Idea Failed


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

206.38

Word count

2,222

Sentence count

156

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Toxicity

21

sentences flagged

Hate speech

34

sentences flagged


Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Men are from Mars. 1.00
00:00:01.000 Women are from Venus.
00:00:02.000 You guys, this is not rocket science.
00:00:04.000 And yet, the CEO of Bumble rode the empowerment industrial complex of the mid 2010s and brought a dumb dating app to the market that required the woman to make the first move.
00:00:13.000 And now the company, after its stock price has tumbled, is cutting its signature feature after fighting an uphill battle against human nature for the last decade or so.
00:00:20.000 I'm sure some of you guys have met your spouses on dating apps, but I think it's time I burst your bubble.
00:00:25.000 Dating apps, they're not all they're cracked up to be. 1.00
00:00:27.000 This particular dating app is unbelievably stupid. 0.99
00:00:30.000 There is apparently a dating site called Bumble. 1.00
00:00:35.000 Hey, how anyone thought this is a good idea is beyond me. 0.99
00:00:38.000 Bumble, according to The Atlantic, was meant from the start to be feminist. 0.98
00:00:43.000 In 2014, Whitney Wolfherd launched the platform to solve what she saw as a problem an epidemic of aggressive men on dating apps. 0.96
00:00:50.000 If women were the only ones allowed to initiate conversation, Wolfherd's thinking went, they'd be in a position of power and agency.
00:00:55.000 For once, they'd get to be the pursuers. 0.96
00:00:57.000 And perhaps the Bumble man, knowing what he signed up for, would be an enlightened type, content waiting patiently to be chosen.
00:01:03.000 This was the dream of girl boss dating and how lovely it was while it lasted.
00:01:07.000 It died this past Tuesday when Bumble announced that men will now be allowed to message women first.
00:01:12.000 Two thirds of women said they would prefer not having to instigate each interaction.
00:01:16.000 Younger women, especially, reported that having to go first added pressure.
00:01:19.000 Many said they were fed up with men who seemed to put little effort into romance.
00:01:23.000 The company's share price has declined 57%.
00:01:28.000 Now the app is launching new features, including one that will deliver a slightly chastening note, who send perfunctory openers.
00:01:35.000 The age of app optimism is already over. 1.00
00:01:38.000 Okay, so I'm just going to point out that this was always an incredibly stupid idea, like a truly stupid idea. 1.00
00:01:45.000 Of course, women want men who initiate. 1.00
00:01:48.000 And of course, men are the ones who initiate.
00:01:50.000 This is not a shock in any way, shape, or form. 0.81
00:01:53.000 Now, many women may tell themselves that they want to be the ones who initiate with men, but I'm just going to say they're not telling the truth to themselves. 0.58
00:02:00.000 As a general rule, there may be exceptions.
00:02:02.000 Those exceptions are few and far between. 0.98
00:02:04.000 Men are more aggressive when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex, and women are typically more passive or defensive, which is the way that God made us all. 0.78
00:02:14.000 That's not a terrible thing. 1.00
00:02:15.000 And all these apps pretending that men and women are exactly the same are predicated on absolute stupidity. 1.00
00:02:21.000 So many of these dating apps are just stupid in the way that they are put together. 1.00
00:02:26.000 Now, there are some dating apps that are designed for marriage, and those are fine. 0.99
00:02:29.000 But it seems to me that many of the dating apps, which are designed for sex, for people to meet up, men and women are expecting different things, shall we say, from these apps.
00:02:38.000 It turns out that one of the great inventions in the history of mankind was marriage.
00:02:42.000 Why?
00:02:42.000 Because it turns out that men are actually quite simple.
00:02:45.000 Note to all the ladies in the audience men are not complicated.
00:02:48.000 We are not complex.
00:02:49.000 We are incredibly simple.
00:02:49.000 We are not nuanced.
00:02:51.000 All men want out of a relationship with a woman is three things food, sex, and respect.
00:03:00.000 Those are the three things.
00:03:02.000 There are no more things.
00:03:03.000 I know that sounds simplistic.
00:03:05.000 And within each one of those categories, there are many different variations.
00:03:08.000 And of course, some people are heavier on one of those factors than the other.
00:03:11.000 Some people are happy with two of the three.
00:03:13.000 Okay, but let's just be clear. 0.64
00:03:17.000 The way that it works for men is different than the way that it works for women. 1.00
00:03:21.000 Women are looking for love. 1.00
00:03:22.000 They're looking for compassion. 1.00
00:03:24.000 They're looking for care.
00:03:25.000 They're looking for comfort.
00:03:27.000 They're looking for protection.
00:03:29.000 They're looking for emotional resonance.
00:03:31.000 They're looking for all sorts of things. 1.00
00:03:34.000 And so this is why the feminist revolution that basically said, what if we treat men and women exactly the same with regard to sex? Was the dumbest idea in the history of mankind because men and women are different. 0.95
00:03:44.000 In fact, the reason that men Typically, initiate conversations with women, and women are typically defensive, is because evolutionarily speaking, sex led to procreation. 0.99
00:03:53.000 Women needed to be pretty careful about who they had sex with because they might end up mothering the child of that person. 0.89
00:03:59.000 And so that meant that women had to be significantly more discriminating about who they picked, which was good. 0.94
00:04:06.000 And then it turned out that women, in order to incentivize men to actually, you know, stick around and care for the child and be part of a family, the idea was you don't have sex until you're married because then you get all the benefits of the relationship. 0.87
00:04:21.000 If you are the woman, you get the companionship, you get the compassion, you get the care.
00:04:25.000 You get the length of relationship, you get all those things.
00:04:27.000 And for the men, you get the things that you want the food, the sex, and the respect, right?
00:04:30.000 Those were the things.
00:04:32.000 That was the basic predicate for all of human history when it came to male female relations. 1.00
00:04:36.000 And then we decided that we would shove our face into the oven as a society.
00:04:40.000 And it turns out it doesn't work. 0.74
00:04:42.000 It turns out that all of the women who said that they wanted to initiate dating conversations with men, they didn't.
00:04:47.000 They wanted a man who was going to do the thing that they know that they want him to do, which is initiate the conversation. 0.84
00:04:51.000 Again, men and women, not the same. 1.00
00:04:53.000 My favorite social science study ever done, 1989, it's called the Clark and Hatfield study. 0.94
00:04:59.000 It was originally conducted in 1978 by Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield.
00:05:04.000 So here's what happened.
00:05:06.000 Attractive male and female Confederates would approach total strangers of the opposite sex at a bar, and they would ask one of three questions Would you go out with me tonight? 0.53
00:05:14.000 Would you come over to my apartment? 0.92
00:05:15.000 Or would you go to bed with me? 1.00
00:05:18.000 So an attractive female would do that to a bunch of men at a bar, and then an attractive male would do that to a bunch of women at the bar. 0.70
00:05:24.000 When it came to dating, about half of both men and women agreed to go out on a date with a complete stranger.
00:05:29.000 It was back in 1978.
00:05:32.000 When it came to apartment or sex, about three quarters of the men were like, Yep, sounds great. 0.84
00:05:38.000 And it turns out for the women, when an attractive man came up and said zero said sure. 0.90
00:05:44.000 Zero.
00:05:46.000 Because again, men and women want different things.
00:05:48.000 It is a hilarious, like I want to just review those stats again because they're important because they're funny and important.
00:05:54.000 And they just the way God made the world is a funny.
00:05:57.000 He has a sense of humor.
00:05:58.000 Hey, again, review those stats.
00:06:00.000 Half of men were fine with the date.
00:06:03.000 75% of men were fine with the sex.
00:06:07.000 That means that two in four men were fine with dating, and three in four men were fine with the sex.
00:06:11.000 That means at least one in four of those men was like, Listen, I don't want to talk to you.
00:06:15.000 I just want to bang.
00:06:17.000 Right? 0.99
00:06:18.000 I just want to go straight to the sex.
00:06:18.000 I don't want to have the date.
00:06:21.000 And perhaps for the other two out of the four, they're like, I would like to talk to you and also do the sex.
00:06:26.000 Right? 0.96
00:06:26.000 And for the women, they were like, Listen, I want to talk to you, but I don't want to do the sex. 0.96
00:06:30.000 Right? 1.00
00:06:30.000 I want to do the date, but then I don't want to go back to your apartment. 1.00
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00:07:40.000 Okay, this is the way men and women work.
00:07:43.000 And every time people try to fix this thing, you end up just destroying male female relations.
00:07:48.000 So they actually replicated this experiment 45 years later.
00:07:51.000 So now it's like 2025, and they're replicating this experiment.
00:07:54.000 So, what happened?
00:07:55.000 Well, it turns out that many, many more men than women accepted the offer for the date.
00:08:02.000 Okay, so what actually happened?
00:08:03.000 What actually happened?
00:08:05.000 The number of people who accepted the offer for the date had dropped radically.
00:08:08.000 Okay, now the numbers stayed the same for sex, but they dropped radically for the dating.
00:08:16.000 Because that's what happens when you disconnect sex and relationships. 0.85
00:08:20.000 The women still don't want to go back to the dude's apartment, and the men still want to go back to the ladies' apartment. 0.79
00:08:24.000 But now nobody wants to date. 0.53
00:08:27.000 That's what happened.
00:08:28.000 Great job, everyone. 0.97
00:08:29.000 You did an awesome job completely destroying relations between the sexes by pretending that men and women are precisely the same. 0.96
00:08:37.000 By the way, it is funny. 0.95
00:08:39.000 The beginnings of the Bumble brand, it's astonishing. 0.98
00:08:44.000 The woke time of 2021, woke 1.0, as they say, was the dumbest time. 0.98
00:08:49.000 And I say that advisedly because we may be living in the dumbest time. 0.91
00:08:52.000 Every day, as I've said to all of my producers, I feel like I'm living in the book of Deuteronomy. 0.99
00:08:58.000 Each night, I think to myself, it can't possibly get any stupider. 1.00
00:09:01.000 And then I wake up in the morning and I think, I wish it were just as stupid as it was last night because it just keeps getting dumber. 1.00
00:09:07.000 But an incredibly stupid time in human history was definitely 2020, 2021. 0.99
00:09:12.000 Time magazine article about Whitney Wolfe Heard from March 2021. 0.97
00:09:18.000 Bumble's brand is deeply embedded in the empowerment industrial complex, more youthful than lean in, less litigious than time's up. 1.00
00:09:24.000 Bumble represents a type of friendly Sadie Hawkins feminism that is more about feeling powerful than wielding power. 1.00
00:09:31.000 Her success at Bumble, billed as the dating app where women make the first move, had cast her as the kill bill of the tech world, the yellow clad woman seeking vengeance after men tried to bury her. 0.93
00:09:40.000 Much of the coverage focused on her experience years ago as a co founder at the dating app Tinder, where Wolf Heard was allegedly harassed by an executive who was also her boyfriend, got dumped, announced it from the company, and went on to sue for sexual harassment.
00:09:50.000 So she reacted to the fact that she didn't like her boyfriend by founding a company that is completely contrary to human nature.
00:09:57.000 And it turned out not great.
00:10:00.000 It turned out not great.
00:10:04.000 Wolf Heard says that they would have blocked Donald Trump.
00:10:06.000 From the app.
00:10:08.000 Her husband maxed out donations to Trump in 2016 and 2017.
00:10:15.000 So Bumble started off fast, and then it turns out that none of the women were messaging the men, and then they were getting annoyed with the men that the men weren't messaging them.
00:10:24.000 So it turns out that passive aggressiveness as an app is even less popular than passive aggressiveness in real life.
00:10:32.000 Again, amazing job, everyone.
00:10:34.000 Amazing, amazing job.
00:10:36.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:10:38.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:10:39.000 Well, you know.
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