I’ve received some rather … interesting messages lately. And not the usual type of interesting. Just weird interactions.
A gentleman in my phone as ‘Scott Tinder’ reached out to me over the Thanksgiving weekend:
I had absolutely no idea who the fuck this dude was. I have an admittedly shitty memory, and this is what my contact list looks like:
So I called for backup, asking my friends if they had any idea who this guy was. They didn’t. ‘Scott Tinder’ also inquired as to whether I smoke pot, but stopped messaging me when I made it clear I wasn’t going to be back in town while he was looking for a couch to surf. I thought he might be a guy I met from Barrie over the summer, but didn’t really give it much more thought until he found himself in another housing crunch yesterday. After again asking to ‘crash’ at my ‘pad,’ I figured I didn’t have anything to lose if I asked this dude exactly how we knew each other. Turns out not only is he not from Barrie, we never actually met up. I must have deleted our conversation when things petered out, and my goldfish memory took care of the rest. While I appreciated his creativity, I told him AirBnB was probably a better housing option than failed Tinder convos.
I received a solid opener from a guy on OkCupid (he asked how often people tell me I look like Lena Dunham and then said he wanted to follow me around Brooklyn while I pretended to be her). We had a good rapport going for a couple of days, but when I said something would be better explained over wine than text, he replied that he ‘had to be honest, he’s from the U.S. and only comes to Toronto occasionally.’ Oh, and he was boarding a plane back to NYC in a few hours. I double-checked, and not only did his profile say he was in Toronto, but under ‘looking for’ he selected the ‘near me’ option. Right.
Finally, I received another message from an OkCupid-er, one on the shy side who didn’t have any pictures. He offered to text me one; I asked that he email it instead. I received a picture of a grainy 90’s-era photograph, partially blurred by the flash, with the overall look that it was taken with a potato rather than a camera. He said he didn’t have pictures online because of his work (in a bank), said he was different from normal guys because he’s British, and pushed to meet for a drink rightnow. All the alarm bells went off. The last time I went out with someone whose story was this spotty, I ended up getting yelled at in the street. I wished him luck, he apologized, said he was just wary of nutjobs (not that I am one), and that he already emailed another picture. Being the curious person that I am, I checked. He had simply cropped the potato pic (same flash-blur intact) and was trying to pass it off as ‘recent within the last 1-2 years.’ Cool story bro.
Steph Not Stephanie 