Dating : My Craziest Tinder Story: I Met a Celebrity

A few years back, I had Tinder on my phone and would scroll through hundreds of profiles every day. One caught my attention.

His Tinder profile consisted of a professionally-shot photo taken of him in a tightly fitted T-shirt that flattered his muscles, and a pair of skinny jeans, playing his bass guitar on a stage. He had a few similar others in his profile. It looked like he was a professional musician of some sort. Caucasian and assumably in his early 30’s, he was fairly good looking and charismatic.

He matched me on the same day I swiped right on him. He shot me a message right after, telling me that he was on a music tour in Asia and holding a gig in my city later that night.

Soon as he told me the name of the band he was playing in, I was immediately filled with scepticism.

They were a band with a hit single that became a soundtrack in a Marvel blockbuster. A band that had made headliners of numerous music tours, that had performed at the MTV Awards and sold over 1 million copies with one of their hit albums just in the U.S. alone.

I knew all that because I listened to their music quite a lot as a then-fan of rock music when I was a teen back in the day. Though I wasn’t extremely crazy about them, I would have some of their songs on replay on Windows Media Player.

Yet, neither his name nor his face rang a bell to me. I had never seen him in any of the band’s music videos. I told him that I knew his band but had never heard of him. He said he didn’t join the band until two years ago.

Doubtful and curious, I looked up his name on Google. It turned out he was the new bassist of the band, according to Wikipedia.

Anyway, I kept chatting with him to see where the conversation was going.

After chatting for a bit, he invited me to his gig and hang out with his band that night.

A huge thrill ran through my body. The chance of meeting someone well-known doesn’t come every day. And he was kinda cute.

While I was dying to see him, I was also a little skittish at that point as I didn’t want to seem too eager. I made up an excuse, and told him I was occupied with work and would meet him after his show.

That night, he texted me and said he was around the area which happened to be where I was having dinner with my friends. I might as well make my way there after dinner.

It wasn’t the first time I met someone from Tinder. But being able to meet someone semi-famous had me burst with fluttering excitement.

With my heart thumping a little faster than normal, I walked into the bar with the location he texted me. It was so dimly lit inside that I could hardly see anyone at first.

But when his face started to fill my sight, I was starstruck. It was really him, together with the whole band whom I could never in a million years imagine meeting personal and up-close.

He extended his arms for a hug and smiled. In real life, he was even nicer than he was in texts and more charming.

“Let me introduce my friends (the band) to you,” he said, as they noticed my arrival. The frontman of the band whom I could only admire through a computer screen when I was a teen was now standing only an inch away from me. As he introduced himself to me, he had no way that I knew the name of almost everyone in the band.

I was so hyped up about letting him know that I used to be his fan. Exhilarated, I said, “I know who you are. I used to watch your videos on YouTube all day long when I was a teen. You inspired me so much with the lyrics of your songs. My favourite song was…”

I went into a full-on fangirling mode that only resulted in annoyance on his face. He couldn’t care less about me because he had probably already had countless fans showing admiration in the most annoying ways imaginable.

Though I might have made myself a fool there, my Tinder guy was very kind. He went on to introduce his other bandmates to me. We ended up hanging out at the bar and the McDonald’s where we ordered cheeseburgers and fries at midnight.

At that time, most of his bandmates and the band managers had already taken off. He asked me if I wanted to go back to his hotel. I graciously declined. He and I remained in only very brief contact after that time.

To this day, I am still amazed at how technology could bring you life experiences like never before. If it wasn’t for Tinder, I would have never met famous people whom I otherwise would have never crossed paths with. (No, I don’t work for Tinder.)

From then on, whenever someone asks me, “What is your craziest Tinder story?” I say, “I met a celebrity on Tinder.”