Have you ever caught someone you met on a dating app in a lie?
TikToker Jenny, who is known by username @jennyisthegreatest, recently shared “another dumb dating story” with her followers. In the video, Jenny details how she says she caught a Hinge match lying about his social media presence.
“Okay, I can share the story now that I’m not seeing that guy anymore,” Jenny says in the video. “I was seeing this guy that was like, ‘Jenny, I don’t have Instagram, I don’t have time for that.’ I was just like, cool, I don’t care.”
@jennyisthegreatest should i cut my hair short or grow it out #hingedating #fakeinstagramstory #yellowfever #majorickkkvibes ♬ original sound – Jenny Nguyen-Don
At the time, Jenny was considering a haircut. Since her Hinge match said he didn’t have an Instagram, Jenny says she sent him two screenshots of Instagram photos and asked him his preference.
“So then a few days after that, I noticed someone was watching my (Instagram) stories,” Jenny says. “But I didn’t recognize them. I was just like who is this person? Could it be the guy who told me he doesn’t have Instagram? It can’t be. Why would he lie about that?”
The unknown account watched Jenny’s Instagram stories for multiple days. The timing made Jenny feel suspicious.
“It’s just too big of a coincidence for me to send screenshots of my photos and then to have a new person watching my stories, right?” she asks her followers.
Jenny says she decided to try and find out the person behind the anonymous account. “I’m like high-key crazy and I’m also very tech savvy, so I knew I was going to figure out who it was,” she says.
It wasn’t an easy task. The user had no profile or grid photos and only three followers, all of which were spam bots. But she did get a few hints from the user’s following list connecting him to her match. Still, Jenny wanted confirmation her Hinge match was in fact the anonymous Instagram account.
“He has a fake Instagram. Yuck, he uses it to follow his ex-girlfriend, keeps tabs on her, and also just follows a bunch of hot Asian influencers. That’s actually so gross,” Jenny says.
“So then I went on Instagram, did the ‘forget password,’” Jenny explains. “It’ll automatically send a ‘forget password’ link to whoever’s phone number it’s connected to. It shows the first three digits and the last two digits of the area code.”
The digits were a match. “I’m like yo 100% this is him. He has a fake Instagram. I’m getting the ick,” Jenny says.
The video has amassed more than 5.9 million views and 1,900 comments since it was posted on June 15.
Users immediately asked for a follow-up.
“Omg part 2 please, I’m obsessed,” wrote one user.
“Wow the forgot password trick is next level,” wrote another commenter.
“‘I’m highkey crazy and very tech savvy’ – literally me hahaha,” wrote user Caroline.
“The athletics it takes to date men,” wrote a user called Ultra.
“Girl, your spidey senses are amazing,” wrote Sarah.
Jenny followed up with a Part 2 in which she recounts how she confronted this Hinge match. Jenny tells her followers he denied being the owner of the account, and said it could potentially be a friend or one of his family members.
@jennyisthegreatest ♬ original sound – Jenny Nguyen-Don
“You sure about that? Do your cousin or your friends have the same phone number as you? And I told him about the forget password thing that I did. And he was like ‘oh.’ And I could tell he was sweating again.”
In Part 3, Jenny reveals how the Hinge match finally admitted the truth.
@jennyisthegreatest ♬ original sound – Jenny Nguyen-Don
The Daily Dot reached out to Instagram via email.
Update, June 25 4:35 p.m. CT: Jenny, responding to the Daily Dot’s request for comment, said of the reaction to her post, “I thought it was funny. This is the second time one of my dating stories has gone viral so I kind of was prepared/hoping for a similar response.
She added, “Girls always support and feel similarly, but if I ever get any hate comments it’s usually from guys. It mostly feels validating when people comment with a similar experience or just something they relate with.”
