Proudly ushering in a new era of modern romance, the phrase “favoriting tweets” appeared this past weekend in the iconic New York Times Vows column, which highlights the love story of one couple who has recently said "I do."
Andrew Gregory and Casey McIntyre were this weekend's couple. Their love story took a turn when the couple broke up for a brief time in 2012. Gregory decided he wanted to win McIntrye back and took an unconventional approach to do so, by "randomly 'favoriting' her tweets."
Twitter favorites have been touted as a flirting option in the past. In 2014, Time Magazine wrote a guide to types of Twitter favorites. The first type included? The "flirt fav." Bullett Media also snarkily explored potential meanings behind the act of favoriting, and the first possible intention listed was flirting. They likened the deed to a Facebook poke, "but with 75% less desperation."
For McIntyre and Gregory, Twitter (and other social media platforms) were a "low stakes" mode of flirting, McIntyre told Tech Insider. "It's also a way to show someone you are interested in what [they are] doing or that [they] makes you laugh," she added.
Andrew and I had not spoken for several months and I was still terribly sad...so I felt conflicted about suddenly seeing him favorite tweets. I still loved him, so a part of me definitely hoped it was flirting but there's obviously something completely embarrassing about feeling affected by such a small gesture (I mean, it's not like they were RTs, amiright?).
She recalled the first "fav" that Gregory sent her way, in response to a "silly airport travel related tweet." McIntyre assumed it was a fluke, "until the next one popped up a few days later." Then she starting favoriting his tweets.
We tracked down one of the tweets in question:
—Casey McIntyre (@caseyrmcintyre) May 20, 2013
This is not the first time Twitter has played a role as an undercover dating service — CNN's Brian Stelter and NY1's Jamie Shupak met via Twitter (Stelter says he used the platform's private direct message service to flirt with his now-wife).
Now that The New York Times has included Gregory's Twitter gesture as part of his seminal love story with McIntyre, the "flirt fav" might have just moved beyond joking territory.
But don't go forgo roses just yet.
“Twitter created an opportunity to start a conversation again in a lighthearted way without any real pressure," McIntyre told us, "but once we started seeing each other again Andrew went back to old-school romantic gestures — more flowers, less favs."
