Technology

Bumble Just Bumbled Into the Prince Harry–Meghan Markle Romance

It ignored the fact that there are no royal couples on Bumble.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announcing their engagement at the Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on Nov. 27 in London.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement is great news for romantics, Suits fans, and nonstodgy monarchists alike. It also proved an irresistible occasion for the dating app Bumble to remind its users of its existence.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did not meet on Bumble, for the record. The official story is that a “mutual friend” set them up, and as fun as it is to think about what kind of person might be friends with both a prince of England and a basic-cable actress slash humanitarian (British tabloids point to the fabulously named Misha Nonoo as the friend in question), any connection to the dating app that bills itself as “feminist Tinder” is fictitious. That Harry and Meghan met without the aid of an app is illustrative of one glaring problem with dating apps, which is that people like Harry and Meghan are not on them. To imply otherwise is sort of like President Trump claiming credit for an economy that’s been recovering steadily for years; you don’t get points every time anyone anywhere falls in love, Bumble.

Another problem with dating apps: They’re incentivized not to help you fall in love and eventually leave but to make you spend as much time on their platforms as possible, which theoretically means dating forever. This isn’t Bumble’s fault; it kind of goes with the territory, but it does imbue the push alert with an uncomfortable subtext, like the app is knowingly drawing you into a romantic Ponzi scheme, in which your investment of time never yields the promised happily ever after, now with royal trappings. (Dating! Just another internet scam.)

Will Bumble now send a push notification every time there’s notable loOoOove news in the world? Hurry up, the field of available life partners is now two people smaller! Though the text isn’t meant to be taken literally, its message might rub some users the wrong way. No customer wants to be treated like he or she is desperate. Getting all caught up in the fairy-tale romance of a royal love story makes us forget for a second that it’s exactly the kind of traditional hooey that apps like Bumble are supposed to help modern women avoid. Bumble users want to make the first move, not wait for the approval of an ancient and famously stuffy institution. Bumble users don’t need the queen’s blessing!

Anyway, thanks for that, Bumble. If push alerts are like pick-up lines, yours just earned a hearty swipe left.