'Tinder Games' Champion Has Heart, Quits Tinder

By Rachel Cromidas in News on May 11, 2015 8:50PM

The Chicago woman behind the "Tinder Games" is done asking eligible men for free pizza, she says.

The 22-year-old Lakeview woman never anticipated her game with a friend to make men buy her food on the dating app Tinder would go viral after she dubbed herself "Tinderella" on Facebook last week.

In an exclusive interview with Chicagoist the woman, who asked to only be identified by her first name, Lara, because of privacy concerns, said the so-called Tinder Games was devised by her and her roommate Sunday, May 3, during "a wine night."

They were hungry, and initially the roommate and a friend of his thought it would be funny to ask men on Grindr, a hookup app used mostly by gay men, for free food. The joke evolved into a game and Lara took to her rarely-used Tinder account with a mission to convince a man to order her a pizza before her friends on Grindr could net some pie.

After a few failed attempts, Lara found a man who was down.

"He just found it funny. He thought it was clever so he did it," she said.

Two days later, Lara was back on Tinder, this time with the help of female friend and fellow Tinder user.

"She said, let's try to have a game to see who can get the pizza first," she said." We weren't thinking much of it because we wanted to have fun."

To avoid giving out her address to strangers, Lara used the address of a nearby Starbucks to have the food delivered, she said. In the end, their haul included several pizzas and an order of sushi.

The rules of the Tinder Games are simple: "You just swipe right, and whomever messages you, you ask for a pizza. And whoever gets it first, you win a pizza."

Since Lara first boasted on her private Facebook page about her achievements last week, the game has gone viral, been the subject of multiple news stories and has become popular on Twitter under the hashtag #tindergames.

But Lara hasn't asked Tinder users for any more food since, and in a moment of reflection, she deleted her profile last week.

"After all these articles about it, I just wanted to delete it," she said. "I think most people think it's funny, which was my intent. But some people think that you're using them, and that wasn't my intent. Guys are going on this app as a hookup site. It's not like I was doing it to be malicious."

The point was to poke fun at the online dating world, after all, Lara said, not to avoid buying her own food.

"I just haven't done it since," she added. "If I did it, I would probably donate the pizzas. I encourage people to send their pizzas to homeless shelters."

We asked the Tinder Games champ if she would consider sending us a pizza Monday afternoon. Her response: