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Meet Tinderella, the Queen of Tinder

By Serena Solomon | November 4, 2014 7:59am
 Tinderella is an anonymous blog written by a 27-year-old British woman who lives in New York City and writes about dates she finds on dating app Tinder.
Tinderella is an anonymous blog written by a 27-year-old British woman who lives in New York City and writes about dates she finds on dating app Tinder.
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DNAinfo/Serena Solomon

NEW YORK CITY — If you date online long enough, you end up resorting to nicknames to keep your suitors straight.

In the case of dating blogger Tinderella, a 27-year-old Chelsea resident who's been sharing her romantic travails with a growing audience, there are almost too many to list.

There was the "The Princess-Fetish Tinder," a guy who called her "princess" in every other sentence and at one stage gave her a friendly pat on the head.

Then there was "The Boston Tinder," that enigma who facilitated the perfect three-week romance, including requesting that she stop seeing other people, before sending a text saying: "we're too different for either of us to be happy…"

And then there was "The Married Tinder," the guy who used a fake Facebook account and second phone to evade his wife while he wooed her.

Tinderella — a blonde, British native who asked that her name not be used to maintain the blog's anonymity — found all of her dates through the popular dating app Tinder, which presents users with a potential match's photo and minimal personal details.

She started the blog in January after the drawn-out breakup of a messy three-year relationship.

"I was holding myself accountable for getting out there and moving on from my ex," she said.

The site gets almost 2,000 visitors a day, despite the fact that she only writes about two posts a month.

In each post, she describes her attire for the date (example: "White silk blouse, black pencil skirt, black heels") and her date's attire (example: "A suit"), the day, time and overall rating of how the date went on a scale of 1-10.

Gauging from emails she received, comments on posts and those who discuss it on social media, Tinderella said that readers range from empathetic single girls to men wanting a female perspective. And there are a few older, married readers fascinated by the city's dating scene.

"With a lot of my friends I'm not sure they actually read it but, their boyfriends constantly ask me 'What happen to that guy? Why didn't you give him a chance,'" she said.

While the blog is meant for humor, the most popular post is by far the saddest, according to Tinderella. "The Boston Tinder" is a New England expat who Tinderella described as "smart and rich but not a finance douche." It was three weeks of making out in front of impatient cab drivers, midnight walks through Washington Square Park and days full of loved up text messages.

And Tinderella doesn't mind admitting that this one "trampled on [her] heart."

"The general consensus is he freaked out or he had a girlfriend," said Tinderella, who still seemed thrown by this man's sudden radio silence. "That's the thing when you're coming from Tinder or if it's not a mutual friend, you really don't know what's going on in their lives."

The case brings up how Tinderella approaches the ethics of blogging about her subjects, who are mostly in the dark about the writing project.

In the blog and in the interview she is careful to omit names and other identifiers like what university a date went to or company he works for. She also leaves out sensitive information like when one guy —  "I won't tell you which one," she said — started crying about his ex-girlfriend on the date.

When "The Married Tinder" was recognized by another Tinder user who sent him the blog post about him, he emailed Tinderella and thanked her "for being discreet" with her writing.

Other dates like the "The Republican" and "The British Tinder" have become committed readers, she said.

Tinderella has laid out other guiding rules for herself including never agreeing to a date only for the purpose of writing about it.  She only writes about a date once the relationship is over, which is why "The Boston Tinder" was written weeks after it ended and even then it was difficult to publish, according to Tinderella.

"I just wanted to get it down and also to write about it was my closure — 'OK this is definitely over,'" she said.

Writing the blog has illuminated some interesting truths about the nature of dating in New York City, Tinderella said, especially when compared with dating in her native London.

"I know that I have never dated this much in my life. It's pretty awesome. I have always heard New York is the dating city, but who is to say whether this has been Tinder or living in a city like New York," she said.

"In London, if you were dating someone they would consume all your attention. Here you should just assume that they are dating five other people. It used to annoy me, but now I find myself doing the same thing," she said.

There is also the question of what happens when Tinderella is off the market. She repeatedly states that it's her central goal for every date. Her biggest concern comes from what his reaction might be to this public record of her dating life.

"I would hope if it's the right guy," said Tinderella, "he will understand."