It's the marker of any modern single person: a swag of bad dating stories, more often than not having originated from an app or dating site.
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Producer and director Emma Watts couldn't get enough of the stories and decided to put them to good use, creating the web series Tales From Tinder.
"I was working on this TV show and all of the people working there were on Tinder and Grindr and they'd all have such amazing stories," Watts said.
"I would be going in on the tram on a Monday morning, hanging out to hear what had happened to them at the weekend with these people they would have matched with the week before," she said.
"There were some great stories, so I just started collecting them all, and I didn't really know what I was going to do with them."
Realising people wanted to remain anonymous, Watts, a Narrabundah College alumna now based in Melbourne, decided to tell the stories through puppets.
Watts and her colleagues created Tales of Tinder as a web series with no budget. It gathered a huge worldwide following and screened at the Raindance Film Festival in London, and won best documentary at Webfest in Berlin, as well as awards in Bilbao and New York.
A second season of the show, No Strings Attached, is being made thanks to funding from the ABC and Film Victoria. The show will air on ABC iView next year.
They've also had international attention, securing a distribution deal with NBCUniversal.
The team is gathering stories – this time about all apps and online dating channels, not just Tinder – and Watts hopes to have some from her home town.
"We've collected some really good stories, but we're still looking for more. We've got to find 10 for the show and we've got about four of them," she said.
"We'd love to hear stories from Canberrans and hear about their experiences.I'm coming home for Christmas, so I thought while I'm in Canberra I may as well collect some stories.
"They can remain totally anonymous, we'll just come and do a quick interview with them about their experience. People love to do it because they get a puppet made in their honour; it's like an experience money can't buy."
To share your dating story, contact Watts on nostringstv@gmail.com
