As I looked back on one late Sunday night in February, I realized that what started as a fun way to pass the time has become one of the highlights of my semester. I opened up the App Store and downloaded Tinder for the first time in months. Now before you go thinking I went on looking for a quick hookup or to ogle at potential dates, I'd like to redirect you to this:
Yep, that's right, I made a Tinder profile for my character in A Midsummer Nightmare's Vacation (April 12-14!).
This all started when the executive board's conception of BardFeed left us with a need for fun, relatable content to pander to the masses-and let's be real, what's more relatable than a hilarious Tinder story? Nadia Leinhos and Lucina Hawkins agreed, as they laughed around a table in the GSU. Their idea to launch a Shakespeare Tinder landed on me, which I gladly took on (I love messing with people, I won't lie) and quickly we got to work.
Over the next few hours, we decided to use my upcoming character Titania for the profile-which was an especially good choice since the name would be uniquely Shakespearean enough to catch the eye of a fellow Bard lover, but pretty enough to pass for someone's actual name. With some amazing Photoshopping done by Alexia Chiclana, we took an old production photo from last year (me as Gertrude from Hamlet II, a parody of Hamlet) added some butterfly wings and BAM! I was suddenly the fairy queen of my dreams!
With a caption, thought up by Nadia: "people called me Titty Ana in college and you're welcome to too" (and an added jab at Bottom from yours truly) we were off!
(Some logistics: I figured that Titania is probably pan considering she's a fairy so I set the preferences to male and female, and also decided that I'd probably get the most results if I put myself at 21 years old (it just seemed right) and immediately started swiping right. )
To be honest, this was wicked good for my self-esteem-by the first day or two I had over 300 matches and people messaging me like crazy!
After like four days of random swiping, it came time to start responding to these messages, but I had no clue where to start. In the end, I thought it would be hilarious to see what people did if I sent them exclusively Titania's lines from the original A Midsummer Night's Dream and boy, was I not disappointed.
Some looked up the quotes and tried to play along...
...Some were clueless (but still hopeful!)...
...Some found it amusing...
...And some were just really fucking confused.
(I don't blame them tbh)
Moral of the story kids: don't trust people you match with on Tinder, they could be a fairy queen in disguise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯