Hi everyone, Welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space.
Every Monday through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meisner,
the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
Welcome back to Mini Scroll, everyone.
I am in my Fashion Week outfit. Well, I have been the last two
days, but this was the first day that I was like, dressed by a
brand. So that's why I might look a
little bit fancier, but it was actually my last day at Fashion
Week. So Alex is going to something
later this week for us. And then that is it.
A wrap on Fashion Week? Oh my God.
Also, I had such a wild experience last night.
I talked about it on TikTok. I've been vlogging my week for
you guys, so go follow me on TikTok if you don't, which I
don't think hardly any of you do, 'cause I don't even have
1000 followers. But I talked about in that vlog
and I put it on my reels as well on Instagram.
But last night I was at a fashion show.
It was a nighttime show and on one side, on my left was a man
who was like normal and we were making small talk and whatever.
And then on my right was another man.
And as soon as he sat down, I could just tell he was really
drunk and just so obnoxious and loud and Oh my God, he was
getting in my space so much. Like he would just like lean
over and like make jokes. And anyways, I went into detail
about it, but it escalated after a man on my left told him to
leave me alone because he just wouldn't get out of my space.
He kept talking to me, He kept, like harassing me and bothering
me. And at one point I was just
like, I don't know what's going on.
Basically saying like, please leave me alone.
And then that's one guy on my left said to him like, leave her
alone, dude, Like, stop. And that pissed him off.
And he ended up pushing me with all of his might.
Both arms, like, fully pushed me right into this other man,
'cause he was pissed, presumably, that we were telling
him to stop and to like, leave us alone.
And I fell backwards. It's like benches that you sit
on at Fashion Week. So there was nothing behind me.
I was falling backwards, thank God.
I caught myself and the guy helped me on my left, helped me
kind of like get back up. So I didn't fully fall on the
ground, but it was horrific. So that was Fashion Week Day 2
for me. But I just came back from a show
and that was an amazing experience.
I had a good time today, so let's get in to today's episode.
I was asked to speak about the Bumble Celibacy ad and apology,
and I was going to make it one of three stories today.
But as I started thinking about it and writing it out, I
realized there's just so much to say.
So this will be the only story for today and then tomorrow,
even if like the most happens overnight, I will just give you
guys as many stories as I need to because I still really want
to talk about the two other stories that I had for today.
But I just, it's going to be way too long.
So let's get into Bumble And this, I feel, deserves its own
episode. All right, So Bumble has
apologized for its anti celibacy ads that sparked backlash
earlier this week. So some background on these ads.
As part of a rebrand for Bumble, the company placed billboards
all around LA that poked fun at women choosing voluntary
celibacy, 1 Billboard said. You know full well a vow of
celibacy is not the answer and another said thou shalt not give
up on dating and become a nun. Understandably, the advertising
sparked intense backlash online, as obviously women are not
resorting to something as extreme as celibacy or like,
fully giving up dating for fun, right?
It's a it's a result of fearing for their safety and an
amalgamation of experiences that just makes them feel like
there's no point and I might as well just protect myself and my
peace and stop dating. So this campaign was part of a
bigger rebrand for Bumble. A few weeks ago, Bumble wiped
its Instagram account and started teasing a new vibe for
the brand. They posted a bunch of those,
like, dramatic painting inspired images of Victorian era women
who were tired of dating. You know, the ones they were
like, lounging around. It's the meme, right?
They posted a bunch of things that were like related to the
meme, you know, that baby that like Victorian era baby that's
like wrapped up like swaddled. And it's like me when I get home
from work, like that's literally me.
That is actually me. So this style of imagery is a
very popular on TikTok. It's a meme that young people
recognize, obviously. And it was a very chronically
online move for the brand and prior to them announcing what
this actual rebrand was, which was essentially just some
feature updates and allowing in some cases men to message first,
which already sparked some backlash considering bumbles.
Whole thing is like you make the first move, women taking their
power back and dating. But anyways, people had high
hopes for this rebrand and it was like, Oh my God, they're
really targeting Gen. Z.
And this is going to work because the imagery and the vibe
of their Instagram account of their socials, like it felt very
of the moment. It felt very on the pulse.
So there were high hopes, but like I said, those high hopes
came crashing down. I mean, crashing is a bit
extreme, but people, it didn't live up to what people I think
hoped for or expected. Based on the hype and I would
say based on the rebrand, like the imagery that they used, the
meme culture that they were leaning into, I would say that
this rebrand was targeted at Gen.
ZI. Think that makes sense.
Gen. Z probably has the biggest
cohort of single women, and there has been research over the
years that shows Gen. Z is actually less sexually
active and less interested in dating than previous
generations. And we also know that Gen.
Z is just not as enamored with dating apps and online dating as
previous generations were. I mean, I know for me, I was
single when Bumble came out in my early 20s and it was so
exciting. And Tinder too.
Like I was on those apps when they first came out and it was
literally just Bumble and Tinder were the only two.
I'm sure there were other dating apps, but those were the two
that people were using and it was so exciting.
It was like something we've never seen before.
It was so novel. And obviously that's just not
how Gen. Z feels about it because they've
grown up their whole dating life, they've had apps, so they
are a difficult generation to reach in general for brands, but
especially, I would say, for dating apps.
The two biggest theories that people have when it comes to
what went wrong here is the first people think there were no
women in the room of like conceptualizing this campaign.
And the second is they think Bumble didn't pre test this
campaign, which is I'm not super sure, I might get this slightly
wrong, but it's basically when they hire some external company
and they like bring it to market before a brand actually brings
it to market, you know, so they like test how consumers react to
it, engage with it and feel about it.
So those are the two biggest things that I've seen on like
marketing TikTok where people think that this went wrong, what
I think went wrong. I don't think there was
necessarily no women in the room.
I think there might have not been any Gen.
Zed women in the room. And the reason why I think that
is because to me, this feels like they tried to reach Gen.
Z by speaking to them as if Bumble is their friend.
Like they tried to jump in on Gen.
ZS very like specific and savage kind of humor that is very
unique to that generation. But the problem is that, and I
see marketers do this a lot, they lump millennials and Gen.
Z together as just one big generation of like young people.
And they don't realize that there are so many differences
between these two generations for millennials.
We loved when brands spoke to us like our friends.
Like if you think about the culture we grew up in, it was
pre social media, it was magazines like that was our
culture. That is how our formative years,
like our preteen and teen years, that's what that was all about.
And the concept of a magazine, especially like a preteen or a
teen magazine, is to be like your bigger sister who is
speaking to you like somebody who is older than you and is in
the know and is giving you advice, right.
That's kind of the whole thing, the whole shtick of those kinds
of magazines. So millennials, like we were
down as fuck to be told who we were, what we liked, what we
should be doing, what we should try.
And we were down for that. To come from like a friendly
quote, UN quote, voice Gen. Z is very different.
They did not grow up with that type of media.
They didn't grow up with magazines in that same way.
And they grew up with influencer culture.
They didn't grow up with people telling them what to do or who
to be. They grew up with this whole
platform like social media where you could find any type of
person that you thought was cool and you could, you know, follow
them and emulate them. And social media just gives you
such an opportunity to express yourself and find your own niche
where you don't have to be so uniform in the same way that
previous generations you know, who are reading all the same
magazines. We ended up being very much the
same. So as a result, Gen.
Z is not so interested in being spoken to in that way of, like,
telling them what to do. So the actual, like, ad copy on
these billboards just didn't hit 'cause it was quite literally
like, Thou shalt not like telling them what to do.
And they do not like that, even if it's like in a funny, quirky
kind of way. Gen.
Z doesn't want that, like, friendship vibe from brands.
Instead, they really want brands to address issues and they want
to feel supported and heard by the brands that they support.
They want to feel in control. So off the bat, this messaging
was always going to fall flat with Gen.
Z. And another big aspect of Gen.
Z is that they are a generation who are change makers and they
set boundaries. And we know this, We know we
talk about it all the time. Like there's so much
conversation about how Gen. Z has all these boundaries in
the workplace. And you know, it's the same old
thing. Millennials were entitled and
Gen. Z doesn't have a work ethic or
whatever. You know, every generation has
their thing when they're coming up and they're young, and the
older generations don't understand how they work.
But that's Gen. Z's thing, is that they have
these boundaries, right? So another aspect of why this
didn't work out is bumbles ads. They were making light of this
boundary, which is something that really defines Gen.
Z and is kind of their superpower.
However, the missing piece here that I have seen no one else
discuss is why dating has become worse for Gen.
Z women and I do believe that that comes down to Internet
culture. Young men now are so much more
likely to be exposed to misogynistic anti woman and in
cell ideology online than previous generations thanks to
the rise of social media and in particular in the last couple of
years TikTok. So previously men who wanted to
interact with that type of content engage in that kind of
ideology. They had to actively seek it out
on places like Reddit or 4 Chan or probably deeper darker places
on the Internet that I don't even know about.
But now when you're just scrolling your for you page, you
know you could be delivered content like that let's say
about looks maxing for example, right.
Which is not inherently anti woman but can open you up to the
red pill or even black pilled pipeline.
I mean how many of us like women?
I know most. It's mostly women that listen to
this podcast. How many of us are scrolling
TikTok And we see content like that ourselves, right?
Like, I've seen so many videos about looks maxing.
I did a whole podcast episode because I just kept getting
bombarded by content about looks maxing.
And if you Google looks maxing, like every major publisher has
covered it because it is so prevalent on TikTok.
Or if you think about a couple years ago, before he was banned
off of everything, like Andrew Tate was everywhere there for a
couple of months. You know, scrolling your free
page, you could not get off of it.
I mean, what about like, all those like, bro podcasts, right?
We're all exposed to that all the time now.
Whereas we would have literally never, especially as women, we
probably would have never been exposed to anything like that
before. TikTok.
So this constant exposure has made Gen.
Zed and Gen. Alpha men much more outwardly
misogynistic now. I don't want to get it twisted.
This is not me saying that Gen. Z or Gen.
Alpha are more misogynistic than previous generations, because I
think in many ways that's absolutely not true.
But I think it has become more socially acceptable to a follow
these role models quote UN quote who do espouse these types of
anti woman misogynistic in cell views.
And BI think boys and young men are more empowered than ever at
the moment to be outwardly anti woman because of how popular
this type of content is. And that doesn't even touch on
the fact that constantly being exposed to this type of content,
whether you're seeking it out or not or you believe in it or not,
like how that must be inherently changing the way that boys and
young men think about women, their attitudes towards women,
their behaviors towards women. Like I think a lot of it would
be subconscious and happening without them even realizing it.
The other side of that is this exposure to this type of
content, like I said, is not exclusive to a man's for You
page or a boys for you page. Women are being fed this too.
That's just how algorithms work, right?
It's like you like one video and they're like going to test the
waters and show you something else.
And it could be totally out of left field, but it will have
like some very slight connection to what you just liked.
So women are constantly also being fed all of this content
that is anti woman misogynistic in cell vibes that we would have
not known about necessarily prior to social media and
platforms like TikTok and Twitter.
So that has made young women more aware of how dangerous men
can be. And this is definitely a
generalization, but I would say that young women of previous
generations were a little bit more ignorant to how dangerous
men could be and how unsafe they actually were around men.
And social media, particularly TikTok, has really lifted that
veil for the whole generation. And like I said, Gen.
Z, they're change makers, they set boundaries and they stick to
those boundaries. So the changing culture online
and how that is impacting young women dating right now, they're
setting a boundary for themselves.
They're saying we're not going to stand for men being so
violent towards us, so anti woman so misogynistic, we're not
going to stand for this many men like buying into the red pill
ideology, black pill ideology in sell stuff.
So to counteract that we're just going to stop dating.
So all of that to say, Bumble obviously made this big mistake
in their marketing and sure it might have been because there
were no women in the room or it might have been because they
didn't do pre testing on the campaign.
But what I think also happened is that Bumble didn't have a
strong understanding of why young women are putting up these
dating boundaries and the culture online that has fostered
those boundaries. I think that this campaign is a
fundamental misunderstanding of Internet culture and Gen.
Z Internet culture. So one day after the backlash
really exploded online, Bumble issued a statement and actually
apologized. So they wrote to our beloved
Bumble community. We made a mistake.
Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a
community frustrated by modern dating, and instead of bringing
joy and humor, we unintentionally did the
opposite. Some of the perspectives we
heard were from those who shared that celibacy is the only answer
when reproductive rights are continuously restricted from
others for whom celibacy is a choice, one that we respect, and
from the asexual community for whom celibacy can have a
particular meaning and importance which should not be
diminished. We are also aware that for many,
celibacy may be brought on by harm or trauma.
For years, Bumble has passionately stood up for women
and marginalized communities and their right to fully exercise
personal choice. We didn't live up to these
values for this campaign and we apologize for the harm it
caused. So this apology has actually
been received quite well as far as I've seen.
It was very quick, which we appreciate.
You know, the general consumer, if you sit on something for too
long, it makes us feel like you are conspiring with PR teams.
And like, we know we know that every brand and every big
celebrity influencer that apologizes has a team behind
them helping them, but it makes it feel more authentic if it's a
really quick apology. So it was very quick.
It was explained really well, like what they did wrong, why it
was wrong, who they hurt, what they said about being hurt.
And then they finished by saying what they're going to be doing.
So they said, we're removing these ads from our global
marketing campaign. Bumble will be making a donation
to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, among other
organizations as a part of our ongoing efforts to support the
work being done around the world to support women, marginalized
communities and those impacted by abuse.
We will also be offering these partners this billboard space to
display an ad for their choice for the duration of our reserved
billboard time. So of course, giving a tangible
example of how they're going to use this and make good from it
by giving that billboard space away and making those donations
in general, this was a very good apology.
I think this is the last misstep of this magnitude that we will
probably see from them. I don't think they'll do
anything like this ever again. I think they'll be much more
aware and much more conscious. And I think at the end of the
day, after getting an apology like that, that's all we can ask
for, right? Is just you stick to what you
said, which is this one against our values.
Let's get back to our core values.
All right, guys. Well, that's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed this little kind of like a mini breakdown, a
mini deep dive. As I said, I will have more
stories for you guys tomorrow. OK, guys, thank you so much for
listening. I love you guys and I will talk
to you tomorrow. Bye.