Some Tinder users are just not feeling the Bern.
Robyn Gedrich, a 23-year-old from New Jersey, found this out the hard way when she was banned from the dating app Thursday after messaging hundreds of users about the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign over the past two weeks.
Though she's not affiliated with the campaign, Gedrich said she became a Sanders supporter after researching the Vermont senator's platform and realizing she agreed with many of the points, particularly Sanders' position on higher education.
"He’s the only candidate I see that looks out for the people, rather than whatever money’s gonna buy them," Gedrich said. "I got good grades in school, but I still don’t have enough money to finish college, so that definitely resonates with me."
It was while snowed in during the recent East Coast blizzard
, and bored of the messages she had been receiving on Tinder, that Gedrich decided to use the app to spread the word about the Sanders campaign instead.
Most of Gedrich's messages directed users to text a number in order to volunteer for the Sanders campaign—"Do you feel the Bern? Please text WORK to 82623 for me," she wrote—and though not everyone was receptive, Gedrich said she was encouraged to find that some people wanted to know more.
"Some of them didn’t know about a lot of issues going on in the world, so it was kind of cool to talk to them and explain to them things they wouldn’t have known otherwise," Gedrich said. "Not a lot of them are interested, but at least a few are."
Gedrich estimated she messaged about 50 people per day—around 600 users total—before she was banned from the app for being reported too many times, presumably because other users thought she was a spam bot.
Though Gedrich is the first person to come forward about being banned from Tinder for Sanders campaigning, she apparently isn't the first to have tried the approach. One user documented the "adventures of a perpetual right-swiper in the efforts of electing Bernie Sanders" on a Tumblr called Tinder Campaigning, which consists of screenshots of Tinder messages campaigning for Sanders dated from October.
While she wasn't aware of others campaigning for Sanders on Tinder, Gedrich said she intends to continue using social media to promote the campaign, and even plans to create another Tinder account, though she may take a different approach in the future.
"Next time, I'll probably take my time and work my way into a conversation, instead of kind of trolling them," Gedrich said. "That's what it ended up looking like."
Though she may continue to campaign on Tinder and use the occasional meme to make a point on social media, Gedrich said she doesn't take her support for Sanders' platform lightly.
"I feel like a lot of people look at me and say, 'You're 23, what do you know about this,'" Gedrich said. "I try to be serious about it so no one takes it as a joke."
Tinder and the Sanders campaign did not respond to Mashable''s request for comment by time of publication.
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