By Molly Sanchez
Dating apps can sometimes feel like a game — it’s easy to play a little “swipe left or right” while you’re waiting for a movie to start, and who knew we’d live in an age where you can send flirty messages to someone while sitting on the toilet. What a time to be alive! Regardless of how lightly we may take responding to a potential date, though, there’s no reason to be an asshole to other single people. And sadly, just like IRL dating, sometimes dating apps are infiltrated by dicks (both literally and figuratively).
Alexandra Tweten founded an Instagram account called “Bye Felipe” as a way to hit back at the dickstorm out there. Bye Felipe, a play on “Bye Felicia,” allows people to submit screenshots of their interactions with “nice guys” on Tinder and OkCupid. The speed at which these dudes go from being polite to being downright hostile is enough to make your head spin.
Some of these texts show the bizarre “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” phenomena of online dating where if you tell someone you’re not interested they get mad, and if you say nothing … they still get mad.
Although there’s a dark humor angle implied in this Instagram account, there also lurks the very real issue of men who feel like women owe them answers, and in some cases, their undivided attention.
Tweten said she created this meme so that women all over would know they are not alone in experiencing this kind of online harassment, and to form a “what not to do” for guys on dating sites.
I want to take this one step farther. Let’s start a hashtag #byefeliciasf. That way women (and men) could consult that list before scrolling through their dating feed. Consider it like an Angie’s List sort of deal, but instead of reviewing painters we’d be reviewing asshats.
Via The Huffington Post, images via Instagram.
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