Love on Twitter: The couples who found their significant others through tweets

Alexis Grant sent out a joking tweet — not her forte to begin with — and didn’t think much of it. Why don’t you tell a joke about a man in

One fateful day in 2011, Grant Posted(opens in new tab): “Twitter: Looking for a smart, outdoorsy man around 30, based near me.” [Washington] DC. Bonus points for the stubble. go. “

Harmless, right? It was, perhaps, the best thing she’d ever done, and that’s how Grant met her husband. He texted her — a bit of courage — and struck up a conversation with her that he was soon moving from London, England, to Washington, DC.

In a phone conversation, Grant said, “We always talk about how coincidental it was and how lucky it was to happen.” didn’t know who I was, so even though we followed each other, we didn’t know each other very well, so I was really lucky that he saw… that tweet.”

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More than a decade later, they are married and live in West Virginia. After that first DM, they chatted further and found they had many common interests, especially a love of hiking. Eventually they met in person and became friends. Over time, that friendship turned into a relationship and marriage.

“We always talk about how coincidental it was and how lucky it happened.

Grant, 42, runs a company called They Got Acquired.(opens in new tab)while her current husband, Ben Collins(opens in new tab), is an entrepreneur and technology expert. They were young professionals interested in travel, so they followed each other. But they didn’t know each other at all. As luck would have it, it changed for the rest of my life. This is part of the magic of using Twitter as a dating app. It’s a social media platform where you can follow people with similar interests and goals, and often with a similar sense of humor. That’s a pretty decent foundation for a relationship, right?

Grant isn’t the only person to meet someone important through Twitter.Search Hashtag #WeMetOnTwitter(opens in new tab) And I see a lot of people with similar stories. In an age when Twitter is falling apart, and in the wake of all the tragic events that have happened on the platform, oddly enough, there are also plenty of great love stories that started on Twitter.

Travel blogger Ali Garland(opens in new tab), fell in love on Twitter. And unlike Grant, completely Coincidence. Garland tried to restart her blog in 2010, but was unsure how to set up hosting for the site. Who helped? her future husband Andy.

“I used to live in Atlanta [Georgia], and he was in Germany, so when I finished work, he stayed up late to help me,” Garland wrote in an email. Our conversation was very easy and pleasant. “

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Soon they were on Skype and realized there was a real connection. Details only.

“It may sound a little strange, but he said he loved me before I got a webcam. Before that, I only had a handful of photos on Facebook. I did,” said Garland.

“It may sound a little strange, but he said he loved me before we had a webcam.”

Thankfully, once again travel blogger Garland had already planned a trip to Prague for Thanksgiving. After chatting online for four months, they met his IRL who decided to meet in Prague. It worked out and she was back in Europe to see Andy by the New Year.A few weeks later they were planning a wedding. They’ve been married for 12 years, Garland moved to Germany and never looked back.

twitter is not just Good for finding marriage in an unlikely way. Many relationships start with a Twitter crash.

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Selin Ceren Uzman, a 21-year-old NYU student, recalls seeing her current girlfriend Esmé post a loving subtweet. It was her message to her friend who thinks hot lesbians suck. [one of my followers] My girlfriend is now single or just partnered with Polly and is having a depressing moment. ”

“I sent her a DM asking if she’d like to hang out with me on New Year’s Eve because she was going to be in New York.” because she was very nervous). We both knew we were destined for more than flirting online.”

Esme, 22, attends school at Harvard, so Uzman greeted her with flowers at New York’s Penn Station when she arrived in town. They spent the New Year’s week together and took a few pictures. According to Uzman, “Twitter lesbians ate it”.

Finding someone significant on Twitter wasn’t all that shocking to Uzman.

“Both of them use Twitter on a daily basis as a means of socializing and interacting with other lesbians online,” Uzman said. “Meeting on Twitter wasn’t a huge surprise to us considering how connected the lesbian community is out there. I think it makes for a better story than meeting on Tinder.”

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That’s the great thing about Twitter. your people. Hell, I found an entire community of people obsessed with the same Aloha shirt.

But with Twitter breaking down so often, more strangers, and frankly worse, what to do?For all the sweet love out there, there are countless instances(opens in new tab) Harassing or unwanted sexual messages. Twitter has always been a platform that mixes the absolute worst that humanity has to offer with the good.

For those of you who have met your partner on Twitter, it can be a little strange to see the location change over time. Garland says he doesn’t use Twitter much these days, but he does check it from time to time. But I have good memories of this site.

“I have a lot of DMs that I don’t want to lose once everything shuts down,” Garland said. “A lot of that crappy early relationship romance was in those DMs.”

Grant, on the other hand, says she and her husband aren’t always quick to share what they met on Twitter. get itBut if you’re an avid Twitter user, it makes sense.

“I think it proved the point somewhere And when you share about yourself, you might get someone else to raise their hand and say, ‘I want to be your friend or something more,'” said Grant. ‘t obtain twitter. “

What started out as a place to share lunches and short, silly thoughts about work has sometimes become more really myself. Twitter is a repository for your thoughts. For example, Instagram is… a place to pretend you’re on vacation all the time, right? It’s hard to approach a stranger in a bar. Sending her DMs to people who read her tweets from years ago is much easier. You feel like you know them. We are connected, albeit through the clouded lens of social media.

Even if Twitter were to die one day, it does its fair share of good things, even among its many bad things.(opens in new tab) it was given(opens in new tab)Uzman hopes to live in the same city as Esme soon after graduation. Garland spent eight years with her husband in Berlin, and together she traveled to over 40 countries. Grant and her husband spent years planning and working to establish a lifestyle where they could run their own business and go hiking whenever they wanted. It’s a long way from random tweets from over a decade ago.

“Our dream was to basically do what we do now,” says Grant. “It’s taken me ten years to get here.”