Tinder bans Bernie Sanders supporters for campaigning on app https://t.co/jYvTXwRuIg
— TIME.com (@TIME) February 5, 2016
Truly, the inventiveness of social media shall never fail to astonish. As Slate explains the phenomenon:
… Buzzfeed reports that Tinder has blocked one New Jersey 23-year-old, Robyn Gedrich, from using the app after several users reported her for spamming them with the same request: “Do you feel the bern? Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks!” She sent that message to dozens of matches each day for two weeks straight. Gedrich started her tack after becoming disillusioned by the men she matched with on the app. She decided, without any directive from the Sanders campaign, to try her hand at political persuasion instead. “These guys are disgusting. They’re just looking for sex and that’s it,” she told Buzzfeed. “So if they’re going to swipe right, they might as well do some good and donate to the man, the myth, the legend: Bernie.”
Tinder locked another young woman, married Iowan Haley Lent, out of the app for using it as a campaigning tool. Lent told Reuters she paid for Tinder’s premium privileges so she could change her location to New Hampshire and match with potential voters there. One man from California told the BBC that the tactic stemmed from a feeling that Sanders wasn’t getting enough mainstream press to reach young voters.
These renegade Sanders swipers have gathered in a Facebook group, Bernie Sanders’ Dank Tinder Convos, to share screenshots of their text conversations with matches. With encouraging comments and plenty of ridicule for Tinder matches who respond to Berners with Trump talking points, it’s become a kind of support group for people who use the dating app to canvass singles in their area. “Let’s take over Tinder with Bernie Sanders convos,” the group’s mission reads. The screenshots show a lot of backlash from unwilling marks… It’s making the Facebook group a kind of consciousness-raising space around the absolute garbage men fling at women on Tinder…
Consciousness-raising!… and to think, back in the day, we mostly used that phrase sarcastically, when a borderline-sexist joke or offhand comment fell flat. Good to know that the Youngs continue to invent new political uses for consumerist technology, I suppose.
Late Night Open Thread: Feel the Bern! (But Wash Your Hands, First)Post + Comments (84)