Bang with Friends: it’s useability is clunky at best, but I love the concept.

Ya’ll had to have known I’d review Bang With Friends so you can decide if you want to use it or not.

Of course, it’s kind of useless if you don’t all use it, so you better just sign up now & we’ll all see how it goes together.

So here is the situation. It’s an incredibly low tech/low input site that connects via Facebook to allow you to choose friends you might be interesting in, well, banging. I guess that’s why it’s so simple. Because it’s just that simple.

You basically agree to let it access your facebook, and then a page indiscriminately comes up with all of your friends profile photos. It’s like a sloppy collage. Below the name you can click “Down to Bang” or keep scrolling.

Once clicked, their photo is just there with “Awaiting Bang” glaring you in the face – like all of your failed flirtations just flaunting themselves for the world to see.

It’s nerve wracking!

Next! Someone that you have clicked on clicks on you. Then you get an email (to your real email address, not to your facebook address, which kind of annoyed me because email is more real to me and only for real and important things, not like messing around on this website). The email is entitled “It’s flirtin’ time!” and comes from “pimpin.” (Really? Cute or gross?! Not sure). It happily tells you “This fuck brought to you by Bang With Friends,” which I appreciate. Score for foul language.

You can click the link and see who said they would bang you.

(Never fear, privacy protectors! You only get an email saying someone is into you if you’ve also clicked them. There is no way they will ever know unless you both indicated interest).

Now, if said bang buddy has the gall to email you (might as well, since now you know anyway!), you get another email from pimpin telling you “It’s bangin’ time!” Addressed to “Hey, sexy,” they want you to know “Your friend wants to knock boots with you!” (Again, for the most part I appreciate their ridiculous lingo). Hilariously, if you email someone first, it suggests some starter text “Hey baby, let’s get a little more comfortable.” Which would make me decidedly uncomfortable, but whatever gets people to get some, I guess.

So here are my technical qualms:

-I got all trigger happy and just started clicking people! Oh yes, I’d bang them! Without thinking about it. And it appears there is no way to unclick them. What if I accidentally clicked them? What if I would have hooked up with them last week, but this week I’m over them? What if since I clicked that I was “down to bang” said person, they started dating my best friend?! The tragedies.

–There needs to be a search function!!! What if I signed up with a specific desire to bang in mind? I know who my friends are. I know which of them I would do. Why can’t I just get to it and find them, rather than scroll through everyone (somewhat embarrassingly), fretfully looking for that person, who may never pop up?! Arghh!!

-There is literally no discrimination regarding who you can click and not click on. Not that I’m facebook friends with anyone’s grandma, but I certainly don’t want to be clicking my cousins, siblings, or best friend’s aunt. There should be a filter that makes it so your family isn’t an option. For uncles with different last names/you haven’t listed them as family, there should be a “dude, that’s my uncle, don’t ever show me their picture again” button. I know they’ve said they are working on this, but it can’t be that hard.

-There should also be a way you can create your own filters. Like a “no way I’d never bang them please don’t show me their picture” button for your best friend’s little sister. Or a “I just broke up with this person, please hide their face from me for the next 6 months or appropriate waiting time for me to try to bang them again.” Honestly, I feel a little bit like I violated some of my friends just by looking at their profile picture via this forum. Some people have pictures of their infant babies as their profile picture. I couldn’t help but be like “OH NO! BABY! & I’m not a homewrecker!” I want to filter out these people too. I love you, but don’t want to violate you with my inappropriate glances. Basically, I just want to categorize all my friends.

-There was an early user complaint that you could only pick people of the opposite gender. Which is obviously fucked up and unacceptable and totally archaic. They seem to have solved the problem, but in a really sloppy way. I guess not everyone indicates their gender on their facebook page, so that may be the root of this problem, but when you first open the page it shows you literally everyone. Then you can click on the gender symbol for male or female, but really, that doesn’t work either, because if I never said my gender on facebook, I’ll go in either category. I know it’s a little much to ask this service to let me say “I am generally more attracted to female identified folks” or whathaveyou, but I get the feeling this will be a problem for some people. Some dudes just want to do dudes and not find their lady friends on Bang With Friends. (My personal feelings about gender identity aside…)

-I wouldn’t mind if there was an option to email me even if I didn’t click you. I mean, of course they could just regular email me, but this forum might just give them the kick in the pants they need to say “hey, you would definitely do.” Maybe I just hadn’t thought of you in that way, but I will once you email me.

My emotional qualms:

Well, really I don’t actually have any emotional qualms because I wholeheartedly support the idea of having it be fine to occasionally sleep with your friends if everyone is being mature & smart & safe & communicative about it. (Though one could argue if you needed this app to make it happen, you may not have those things, but….)

But the experience did make me stop in my tracks a bit. How responsible do I have to be for who I click on? How seriously should I take it? What if I would sleep with one of my married friends? I mean, I have a friend with a kid who I have the craziest sexual chemistry with. If the opportunity to cheat fell in my lap, I wouldn’t say no. I guess he knows this already though, so maybe it’s a moot point. It still gave me some moments of existential crisis. Should I cast a wider net, or a more conservative net?!

It’s a lot easier to click on someone in an abstract way than it is to actually fuck them. I guess when it got down to it, you could back out.

All these things made me really pull back on my trigger happy clicking. I guess I felt I really should be able to put my money where my mouth is (my pussy where my click is?) and only click the people I truly would in fact fuck right then and there. Some messy questions can come up about whether or not you’d be willing to risk that friendship for a fuck, but the hope is if they are clicking you, they’ve thought it through, too.

Frankly, friendships get ruined by this sorta mess anyway, so why not get laid more often by the people you love already?

Overall, dead serious, I love this idea. It’s 8 bazillion times better than getting drunk and accidentally fucking your friend. At least you both consciously and soberly said it seemed like a good idea, and then had to exchange at least one awkward laugh/email/text/conversation about it to make it happen.

So, go forth and sign up. Then tell me you are down to bang, and it’s kind of likely I’ll do it.

xox