An Australian TikToker went viral after sharing a horrifically cringy message she received on a dating app.
The viral video depicts TikTok user @badgalphephe speaking to a prospective date on Hinge. At first, the pair make casual conversation. He opens with a compliment and asks about her plans for the evening, to which she replies that she’s “just having a chill one.”
He responds to that message with a voice message, one of Hinge’s new features. He says, “Hello beautiful, hello. I thought I’d send you an audio message, which will freak you out massively, no doubt, because you’ve probably never received one in your life, but I send them prolifically on Instagram and Whatsapp, and overseas I did a lot. But people in Australia are quite shy and awkward, they don’t use them so much.”
He continues, “I was scrolling through your photos, and it’s really not fair. You’ve won the genetic lottery. You’ve really won the genetic lottery, beautiful girl. You probably get lots of compliments about it as well, you probably cringe when you hear it. But your hair is stunning, dark complexion, everything.”
He rounds out the message, saying, “Hope you’re well, we should rendezvous for a date at some point soon, but do let me know what you’re looking for on Hinge as well because some people are more seriously oriented, others not, and I can’t say I’m frothing at the mouth for something serious. I’m probably more towards the opposite end of the spectrum, which you may not like, but, um, yeah, let me know what you’re thinking.”
The video then cuts to the poster laughing as she falls into her bed, saying, “I can’t stop laughing. Oh my god.”
They continue, saying: “I need someone to laugh at it with me, like I cannot deal. First of all, I’m lightskinned as hell, like has he never met another person of color before? Just that whole message was fucking obnoxious.”
She ends the video with the perfect comment, and the comments section seems to agree. “I want to punch this guy and I haven’t even met him,” one said.
Another comment made by @carefreebrowngirl said: “Why does his message sound like a hate crime?”
“This man needed to say less wow,” a third said in a comment that @badgalpheph liked.
Others claim that they’ve received the same message, with one going as far to tag her friend saying “this man is playing every brown girl on hinge.”
The video was posted on March 16, and it has over 44,000 views.
The voice message she received speaks to the outward fetishization and objectification of women of color as “exotic” and sexually available, a stereotype rooted in colonialism and often proven false. Women of color, comparatively to white women, face higher rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault globally. While the message may seem innocuous to some, to women of color it reads as gross at best, and dangerous at worst.
The Daily Dot reached out to @badgalphephe via TikTok comment.
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