Relationships
My Best Friend Took Over My Tinder & The Results Totally Surprised Us Both

Tinder/ Hannah Schneider

My best friend and I are currently in a long-distance friendship — an LDF for short. It can really suck sometimes, but we talk every day and still stay involved in each other's lives no matter the distance. We reunited when I was home for the holidays recently, and between watching movies and exchanging gifts, I had my best friend take over my Tinder. I asked her to try this because I kind of wanted to see what my profile would look like if someone close to me designed it. Would I get more matches or better conversations than I do on my own? It turns out that the results were... interesting.

"Anything goes," I told her as I logged into my Tinder on her phone. As we laid in bed in my parents' guest room, I scrolled through one of my nightly Wikipedia holes while she swiped away. After about an hour, I asked, "So... how's it going?" Instead of going through everything together, I wanted her to have full control over my profile without me knowing anything. This way, when I checked it all out in the morning, I would be able to see the difference between how I use my own Tinder and how someone else would.

"Well, I truly do not know what your type is, so I am just swiping based on who I think is hot," she said without turning back. (Our types are pretty different.)

"Oh, haha, this should be interesting," I said, and promptly fell asleep. In the morning I logged back into Tinder on my phone, and the old bio and photos were no longer there. Instead, my best friend had chosen some of her favorite pictures of me for my profile, and a lot of them were pictures I had forgotten about (especially one from the dentist).

My favorite photo that she added:

As for my new profile picture, I thought it was interesting that she switched the original main photo from a selfie to an image from a modeling shoot that I did in Central Park last year.

The next thing I noticed about my revamped Tinder profile was my bio. It was funny seeing such a personal space after it's been reworked and art-directed by someone else. The new bio made me LOL because it said:

"What's up blues clues fans? I have big hair, a big brain, and I live in the Big Apple. Tell me your favorite La Croix flavor, and I'll tell you mine. If you like what you see hmu."

These things are all true. I am smart, my hair is giant, and I do have a serious penchant for La Croix. What made me smile was that I've never been so bold in a dating profile app before. Not because I felt like I shouldn't but just because I never thought to do so. I also thought it was interesting that she mentioned I'm smart in my bio, which is seriously something I've never described myself as in a dating app bio even though I know I am smart. My move is to usually be coy when I set up my profile, but I am definitely much more funny and brazen than coy IRL. I loved the way she worked in my humor and the fact that I'm smart into something short and sweet. I prefer it over my previous bio.

After I had checked out the new photos she had chosen for me and the new bio she wrote, it was time to look at the people she matched with for me. And the results were both funny and honestly kind of heart-warming.

The Matches

This is where it gets kind of funny. My best friend and I have known for a while that we like different types in people. I don't think we truly understood the extent of it until this experiment. When I opened up my matches, the people she had been messaging were just not my type. It was funny to me to see who she had swiped and thought was hot because I don't think that I would have swiped right if it had been me.

I noticed she had started a few conversations with people, so I opened them to see what my wing woman had tried out on my behalf. I cracked up at some of them because they were random, funny things that I probably would have said, like the above screenshot.

Best Friend = Biggest Advocate

There was one conversation I found where she introduced herself as my best friend and talked me up. It made me smile at how much she always has my back. I didn't expect to get a date out this experiment simply because I knew I would need to put in the work with someone to get to a "let's meet" point. However, I saw myself from a different perspective after this. I'm impressed at how confident and cool my profile is from the outside looking in. Thanks to my best friend, I would swipe right on me.