On November 17, a funny new hashtag appeared on Twitter: #BadFirstDateActivities (and #BadFirstDateIdeas, though they’re pretty much the same thing). Rather self explanatory, this hashtag features some hilariously horrible ways to spend a first date.
Tweets using this hashtag have ranged all the way from “ring shopping” to “attending an autopsy.” Wow. Imagine that guy you like in your English composition class driving you to the morgue, holding your hand and smiling cheerfully as a medical examiner pulls a cadaver onto a table. I’d say that calls for some candles!
And of course “double date with parents” is probably just as mortifying as examining a corpse, if not more so. Just imagine, you and your date working at a plate of spaghetti all Lady and the Tramp style while your parents are playing footsie under the table. Or even worse, your mom gets out your baby photos while your dad begins interrogating your date about their career, lifestyle, or arrest record. Yikes.
We’ve probably all heard the new saying “Netflix and Chill,” but how about “Netflix and Kill”? Hmm, well, I guess if the idea of sleeping together on the first date is unappealing, there’s always homicide while rewatching The Office.
All of these and even more creative and hilarious first date scenarios can be found on a quick search of the hashtag on Twitter. Now, if I were to contribute my own tweet to #BadFirstDateActivities, it would probably be something along the lines of playing the question game in a Starbucks. Not the funniest, but it is something that actually happened to me, and let me tell you, being asked in a public setting about whether or not I’m a virgin was, well, memorable to say the least.
I asked some of my friends to give some of their best #BadFirstDateActivities ideas, and I think they definitely beat out all the competition. One was “Them discussing their screenplay. And only their screenplay.” Because we’ve all met that pretentious jerk who is only concerned with their hopes and accomplishments. It just gets better from there: A job interview, their breakup with their previous partner, the Holocaust museum, a colonoscopy, their first sonogram (it’s not yours), their STD test, and—‘tis the season—their grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
So go forth and participate in the revelry and idiocy that is this hilarious tag. And please, for God’s sake, don’t take someone on one of these dates.