Two years ago, he was a freshman at Ball State. She was a junior in high school. The two had downloaded a dating app for the fun and the experience, but something much bigger happened when the couple "swiped right" and found themselves together.
Mitch Robinson, a junior telecommunications major, met his now-girlfriend on Tinder. The two were friends for a year before they began dating and will soon celebrate their one-year anniversary.
“It is actually great. It’s not like I go around saying ‘I met her on Tinder and we never talked again.’ It's ‘I met her on Tinder and our one-year anniversary is coming up,’” Robinson said.
In 2015, Robinson and Amber K. Roth, now a freshman at Ball State, met on Tinder, an app that has since become popular for being the "hook-up app."
A year after initially meeting, Robinson made the move and they started dating.
In college, where the norm would be considered partying, drinking and tallying the number of sexual partners you can achieve in one semester, finding “the one” can be considered a difficult task.
“It’s just a college thing. [I thought] oh, Tinder is the big thing right now. So I hopped on the bandwagon,” Robinson said.
After a bad breakup, Robinson downloaded the app to live the "college lifestyle," which he believed meant hooking up, though the concept was somewhat new to him.
For students on college campuses, a serious relationship can be hard to find. Apps like Tinder, Hot-or-Not and Grindr allow for individuals to get in touch with people quickly, and not always in the most appropriate of fashions.
For Roth, it was a way to meet people. She attended a private school all her life and grew up with all of the same people.
She was unsure of how to find someone she actually liked.
“We [at school] all knew each other since we were like in fourth of fifth grade," she said. "So it was like ‘I see you more as a brother or an annoyance in my life.’”
For Robinson and Roth, prom is their most cherished memory.
Even though Robinson was too old to attend Roth’s senior prom, they went through the motions anyway. He rented a tux and they went to dinner and took the photos.
The two even begged for his access to the event, but Robinson was denied. So he sat in the parking lot until the end of the night.
Robinson and Roth could not care less where they met, and more about the fact that they did.
“It is a little awkward at first because you don’t know how people are going to react. But I think it is funny,” Roth said.
Two years after "swiping right," they laugh about the situation and hope to continue sharing their story.
