Hi Everyone!
Welcome to the second installment of my online dating chronicles! If you missed Part 1, click here! It was just the prequel to the main story!
After returning to Toronto from a weekend trip to Montreal with my friends, I started swiping right on Tinder. I had a few matches and messages by the time I got home because my friends had swiped right on a bunch. I may have swiped right on a few in Montreal, but just out of curiosity. Sometimes curiosity got the best of me and I just swiped right on a good looking guy to see if he swiped right on me. But now that I was back in Toronto, I started swiping for real.
I also rewrote my bio because my friend put “lover of life, mac and cheese aficionado” and something else. Although I love a good mac and cheese, I wouldn’t call myself an aficionado? I don’t know why she chose mac and cheese? Maybe it was because we had ordered it for dinner the night before. I changed it to mention that I loved movies. While we were at the bar, we decided to ask a question at the end of my bio so the guys could more easily start a conversation. It was suggested that I write, “what’s your favourite restaurant?” I decided to change it to “What’s your A&W order?” because it’s one of my fave fast food places and I go there at least once a month.
I had watched a few YouTube videos where a celeb takes over a stranger’s Tinder and there were some funny pick up lines here and there. I was waiting for someone to have a clever one, but to my surprise, there weren’t any (luckily, I didn’t get any gross ones either). Most just started with ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi.’ I was a little disappointed to be honest. A few answered my question with what their fave A&W order was and no one answered the same thing that I order.
*For the purposes of this blog series, names will be changed and aliases will be used.
A few days into joining Tinder, I decided to add Bumble to the dating app lineup. I signed up using my facebook account linked to my blog (not my personal account).
I was simultaneously on both for two weeks. I came across about 10 guys who were former classmates (elementary, high school and university) or a few years older at my high school. I decided to swipe right on any guy I saw from high school (just to see if we’d match…curiosity again!). I happened to match with a classmate from elementary school…did he know/remember me? Did he see that we had 1 mutual friend (my personal FB account). Did he just swipe right on a bunch of girls and not know it was me? I didn’t message him because I had just swiped right because of that curiosity again. If he knew it was me and wanted to connect, he could message me on FB. I even came across two brothers on Tinder (from high school). One is a few years older than me and the other is older than my sister. I told her I came across him and my sister said, “Does he still look good? Lemme see!!!” There’s nothing like a blast from the past that will make you go back to the days you were a nerdy teen crushing on the hot, older guy. I sent her his profile pictures. Her reply, “Oh, he’s still good looking. Did you swipe right? I would never forgive you if you swiped left on Sean freaking Mack!” I did, but I didn’t match with either…oh well. I rationalized it with being too young for them.
I saw a few guys on both Tinder and Bumble. I even matched with one guy ON BOTH. I had messaged him on Tinder…no reply. I swiped right on Bumble just to see if he had swiped right there too, and we matched. I didn’t want to seem desperate, but since the girl is the one who messages (in a boy/girl match-up) first on Bumble, I messaged him on Bumble too…maybe he hadn’t seen my Tinder message. No reply, oh well. I was a little confused as to why we matched on both. I assumed he had used the tactic that a lot of guys use- he just swiped right on as many girls as he could and would go through the matches and weed out the ones he didn’t want to message. He was the first one that I was interested in based on pics and bio. He made reference to several things that I love: Friends, Parks and Rec, and Batman. I was a little bummed, but no hard feelings.
Originally, my plan was to swipe right on however many I could and then see the percentage of guys who I matched with. When it came time to do that, I just couldn’t swipe right on all of them. I didn’t want to give any false hope or anything. For a while, I was swiping left on a lot of them and then once your thumb gets the rhythm of swiping left, you just start to go faster and faster and then you accidentally swipe left on one you wanted to go right and you’re like NO!!! come back!!! That’s what I like about Bumble. You can backtrack by shaking your phone. It goes back to the last guy you swiped left on. You can backtrack three times and each backtrack is restored after three hours. You can’t backtrack any more than your three most recent left swipes.
When I first joined the dating apps, I wasn’t planning to actually meet up with anyone. I was just having fun trying out this new experience. As I was swiping, I noticed there were a few Englishmen and Irishmen. I was messaging one Englishman on Tinder and one on Bumble. I was messaging Mr. Banana Man (he was wearing a banana costume in one of his photos) on Bumble was a tall, good looking guy and he had a funny reply to my first message to him. We exchanged a few messages. I think he was waiting for me to say something like “I’d love to show you around some day” or “I know this great place, want to meet for drinks?” which would’ve been the perfect way to set up a date, but since I wasn’t planning to actually meet anyone at the time, the conversation died.
With the Englishman on Tinder, I was talking about how I visited Stonehenge and the Harry Potter Studio Tour while I was in London. He replied saying “ooh you like harry potter?” That was strike 1. If he had READ MY BIO, he would’ve seen that I liked HP (being a Brit, I assume he would know that HP is short for Harry Potter). He got strike 2 when he said that he’s “only been here a few hours” and asked if I would want to show him a good place to meet for drinks the next day… wait a second…in his bio, it said that it was coming to the end of his time in Canada and “you don’t want to miss out.” So…which is it, Mr. Liar Liar Pants on Fire? The end of your time in Canada or the beginning? I decided to just stop messaging him after he asked me for drinks because he was probably just looking to hookup since it was obvious he didn’t read my bio and he was either lying about just arriving or about to leave. Being an Englishman in Toronto, I’m sure he didn’t have any trouble finding a girl to swoon over his accent.
As I was messaging guys, I quickly realized how hard it is to convey sarcasm. I wrote a sarcastic message to a guy and he mistook it for a compliment and replied, “thank you, you are very pretty yourself!” He also asked me how tall I was, he was 6’3″. I asked him if he had a height restriction or something. He said he was just curious about my look…whatever that means. Funnily enough, I’m 5’3″ and I sort of have a maximum cap at 6’1″ because any taller is just going to be a strain on both of us. I don’t want to feel like a shrimp next to my partner. My sister is the same height as I am and my brother-in-law is 6′. I think the best height would be between 5’9″ and 5’11” because they would still be taller than I am even if I wear 5″ heels.
In Tuesday’s installment of my online dating chronicles: Superlikes and Daily Extends!
Click here to find out if I made any new sparks on Tinder or if I found the drone to my Queen Bee on Bumble!
Love,
*This blog series is not affiliated or associated with any of the online dating sites/apps mentioned. It is also not meant to discourage any person from using these sites. This was just something I thought would be a fun topic to write about and let you know about my experiences with online dating.