Since being in Biology 117 at SUNY Geneseo, I’ve learned a lot. One thing that I’ve learned involving natural selection is that females are always looking for good alleles in nature. Alleles are one of two or more alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome. My next thought is, well, I better start looking. Clearly, the next step was to download Tinder, a well-known dating app. I couldn’t have my real name on there, but what could my name be? Brilliantly, my friend gave me the suggestion of the super secret, hidden, never to be found out, Gayla Klennon. And thus, Gayla, the confusing pictograph of alleles made up of at least five people, was born.
At first, no one wanted to talk to me. But then I started having some interesting conversations. Mostly, only men matched with me or talked to me. Some guys went along with the allele conversation, and others were completely confused.
Over just a few days, I received 99+ likes on my profile and have made over 60 matches.
They don’t all talk to me, but that still feels impressive. My alleles just looked too good to pass up.
A particular conversation that I enjoyed was originally about cows, but then we went on to just make science pick-up lines back and forth.
One guy offered me donuts. He was on campus, so I met up with him and he actually gave them to me. Who knew I’d get a donut when I went looking for alleles?
A few of my friends responded to people at different times, so I wasn’t alone in this. Gayla suddenly wasn’t a single person, but a community. The person on the other end would never know what they’d be in for. Some people asked if Gayla was my real name.
They might have figured me out! All jokes aside, this was a fun experiment and I didn’t expect to get the amount of responses that I did (let alone a donut!). Turns out the best way to get people to notice you on Tinder is to have a very strange profile, and you might make some friends. Or just weird people out and confuse them about science.
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