Wikipedia describes Tinder as, “a location-based social discovery application that facilitates communication between mutually interested users… and allows users to chat with their matches.”

So basically it's an iPhone/Android app that allows you to “discover” people within a one to 100 mile radius (the distance is up to you). You judge people based on a maximum of six pictures and a 500-character count biography, then choose to swipe left (not interested), or swipe right (interested). If you swipe right to each other then you match, and are able to chat. The rest is up to you.

I had never heard of the app until I got to college, but I ended up downloading it to see what all the hype was about. I never got much out of it, so I deleted the app a month or so after I made my profile.

Later, I was assigned a project in Creative Writing (a fun class if you think out of the box and work hard, with an awesome professor) where we were challenged to get out of our comfort zone in some way, and write about the experience. Many of my classmates wrote about calling a friend from home once a day, or cooking their own meals instead of visiting dining halls, but I wanted to do something different.

Eventually, I decided I had taken Tinder way too seriously before, so I re-downloaded the app and sent 60 or so of my matches, “Are you a traffic ticket? Cause you have 'fine' written all over you.” I wouldn't deem something goofy like that too much out of my comfort zone considering I sent the pick-up lines through the app and not face to face (that'll be the next project), but the responses I received were too funny to not share with you.

Names in this article have been removed for privacy purposes.

The day after I had sent the cheesy pick-up line, fifteen boys had replied. The responses varied from general happiness that I messaged them first, to other pick-up lines too inappropriate to write in this article.

One of my favorite conversations was with a Virginia Tech football player. He responded to my line with, “Lol your funny,” which was both boring and grammatically incorrect so I didn't reply. A few hours later he sent, “Gangster rappers always talking about carrying a 9, while I'm here trying to get to know a young dime (you).” I didn't really understand what he was saying, nor did I know how to continue the conversation so I decided to tell him about my flag-football skills. When I asked for tips to “really bring it at our next flag-football game,” he suggested “steroids.” Then he said, “Lol I'm just playing I've been blessed by God.” Then two minutes after that, “My secret is like I said, 'go hard'. It works every time.” I ended the conversation with, “I expect big things this weekend.” Tech lost. Of course it wasn't his fault, but it made me laugh anyway.

I quickly realized that starting a conversation with a pick-up line can make it die off rather rapidly. One time I Google Translated, “Sometimes birds poop on you” in Spanish (which is 'A veces las aves caca en usted' in case you were wondering) and sent it to three boys who were otherwise being boring. All three boys looked up what it meant (I know because I asked) and replied with ew or the equivalent, to which I sent “:)”.

Now that I think about it, there were a lot of times where I had no idea how to keep the conversation going, but since I had started them, I was usually handed the reins pretty much immediately. One boy replied to me with “Hey I'm ******.” Let us not forget that on the top of the screen on Tinder it displays the person's name you're talking to in bold. I replied, “Hey, I'm Jennifer!” because I felt the need to respond to him equally as stupid as he responded to me.

Out of all of the conversations I had, two boys actually took charge of what was being said, both were absolutely hilarious and slightly terrifying at the same time. One guy replied to my pick-up line with, “That's probably from getting arrested this weekend hahaha that pickup line is so appropriate right now. It's not safe to talk to crooks Ms. Rachel.” The other guy was a catch to begin with. His bio said: “I hate animals, family, and having a good time. I do NOT like to laugh and I'm only interested in hook ups. I refuse to make you laugh, I'm not sarcastic, and I don't like the beach. Netflix is stupid, Disney is stupid, Bush was better than Obama, and tattoos are dumb.” I told him that by the looks of his bio, he seems like my kind of guy. He said, “Let's go throw rocks at children.”

All in all, the Tinder project was one of the most hilarious, and interesting assignments I have ever done. I even made a friend. One of the boys who replied on the first day was a Virginia Tech wrestler, also one whose reply was too inappropriate to share. Of course, I ran into him at a “weekend festivity” with one of my high school friends a few days after our conversation. I ended up telling him that I wasn't really that goofy, and the whole thing was for a project. We ended up taking a selfie together and becoming bffs. The project was fun, but I can't walk around campus and make eye-contact with people without thinking they know. They know I'm that weird girl from Tinder who talks about traffic tickets and bird s**t.