Since moving to New Zealand, most of my IRL relationships have moved to Digiland, with whatsapp call, messaging and voice noting being my lifeline to my friends and family.

Frustrations around call quality and time zones aside, I cannot imagine how much more difficult this move would be without a phone with solid 4G coverage.

But going without my besties and fam-jam isn’t really an option, and so moving my real life relationships to Digiland has been essential. 

But what about the reverse? Moving Digiland relationships to real life? Bumble (a tinder-like dating app) has recently launched it’s BFF platform. A slightly superficial play-date service. Already covered by Mashable and the Guardian, I thought #YOLO, lets see if I can find someone who could potentially be my new BFF (what guys, I’m not going to replace you).

So two weeks ago I downloaded the app, carefully chose photos with the assistance of Stephen that showed the right level of normal and fun, and got swiping.

After swiping through all 12 potential BFFs on Bumble in Auckland, I became disheartened. I got chatting to some lovely ladies, who all faced the same questions as I did: How do you find normal relationships when you’ve (a) just emigrated; (b) all your friends have just emigrated leaving you on your tod; or (c) you’ve just returned from a stint overseas to find your home a different landscape to navigate.

And they’re questions I don’t think I’ve found answers to in Bumble BFF.

And maybe “It’s not you [Bumble], it’s me”.

But instead of reminding me about all the wonderful potential friends out there, it just reminded me how awesome my existing ones are. And that brought down the buzz.

I did try to persist, but with bugs in the app (crashing and failing to load), it became an all to easy out from something I wasn’t really bought into anyway.

So bumble has now been relegated to the deepest recesses of my phone, ignored with other apps like RunKeeper and Strava.