The more obnoxious subset of Bernie Sanders’s supporters has pioneered a number of new ways to alienate people, but even I have to admit I never saw this coming.
Two women - one from Iowa and the other from New Jersey - confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they received notices from Tinder in the previous 24 hours that their accounts were locked because they had been reported too many times for peppering men on the site with messages promoting Sanders' candidacy.
Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent messages to 60 people a day for the past two weeks trying to convince them to support the U.S. senator from Vermont in his race for the Democratic nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Do you feel the bern?" her message to other Tinder users read, parroting a Sanders campaign slogan. "Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks." ...
Haley Lent, 22, a photographer from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Reuters in a Twitter message that she also got locked out of the app on Thursday night after sending messages trying to convince people to vote for Sanders the previous night.
Lent, who is married, said she talked to 50 to 100 people on the app. She had even bought a Tinder premium membership, which allows users to change their location, for a month so that she could reach people in New Hampshire and promote Sanders.
"I would ask them if they were going to vote in their upcoming primaries," she said. "If they said no or were on the fence, I would try to talk to them and persuade them to vote."
This being Tinder and not AshleyMadison.com, one supposes that the married Ms. Lent never intended to use the service to find dates in the first place, leaving me to wonder what she hoped to accomplish by deceiving lovelorn men with a straight-up bait and switch. Once again, one of Bernie’s biggest disadvantages turns out to be his own loudest supporters.