I first downloaded Tinder during my senior year of high school. Although my school at the time was full of less than satisfactory boys, my intention with Tinder was never to get a new date. Instead, I wanted to mess with the boys I matched with.
I did this with some light catfishing and some lies about my interest in my matches. It was nothing malicious, I was just goofing around. In some cases, I would try to act as strange as possible to see what my match’s reaction would be. Inevitably, boys would ask for my number or my Snapchat, either asking for nudes or implying that they would send some. One guy was so desperate for nudes that, when I said I didn’t have a phone, he sent me his address in Boston so that I could mail a letter to him with naked pictures in it. At the time, a phone was the only platform Tinder would work on, so he really didn’t think that through. Overall though, instead of giving guys my own information, I would try to get these dudes to send their nudes to each other.
When a guy asked me for my number or Snapchat, I would go into a list of numbers and Snapchats on my phone that I had collected from other guys. Until I wrote this article, I didn’t realize that I still have this list on my phone. I would hand these numbers and Snapchats out as my own and wait for the guys to message each other.
This process worked fairly well for me. The boys, however, did not seem to like unsolicited pictures of penises. I wonder why! Unfortunately, the boys did not learn from this experience for the most part. They either yelled at me or tried to ask me again for a new number, unsuccessfully, before giving up. However, a certain number of the boys did apologize, and I felt like I had done a good deed. It was my undercover, feminist rebellion.