By Molly Sanchez
Being a woman on Tinder is frustrating sometimes. Between unsolicited dick pics, overly aggressive first lines, and the whole Bye Felipe thing, trying to date online can be a jungle — if jungles also took pics of themselves next to tigers.
One man sought to hack the system, literally. The Verge reported today that a California man (real name unknown) recently hacked Tinder’s API so that dudes who thought they were chatting with women were actually talking to other dudes.
The results were hilarious.
The hacker, whom Verge refers to as “Patrick,” says that the hack was a long time coming. His original idea was to have “a Twitter bot that tweeted every first message a female friend received,” but when he saw that Tinder’s API was especially vulnerable he decided to make bigger adjustments.
According to some of the conversations he captured, each man chatting thought that the other was a lady. Some even ignored big hints like the use of male pronouns because they were, to quote The Verge, “thirsty beasts.”
The thing that sticks out to me about this switcheroo is how men responded more positively to aggressive initial greetings then most women would. Maybe we could save a few headaches if all men just dated each other?
The Bold Italic reached out to The Verge to see if the site knows if “Patrick” has any further hacking plans but nobody responded by press time. Still, I think the moral of the story is to be nicer to whoever you’re talking to online — they may not be what you expect.
[Story and images via The Verge]
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