All the boys you’ll meet on Tinder in Leeds before you smash your phone against a wall

Since technology tossed all that’s sacred about traditional dating to the scrapheap of history, finding romance in 2017 mainly consists of swiping through a never-ending conveyor belt of human disappointment until you find the one that’s least underwhelming.

Leeds’ proudest achievement though, is being named one of the most swiped right universities in the UK so with that in mind, here’s a little guide to all the guys you’ll meet on dating apps here that will mostly make you want to die alone.

The Rugby guy

Tom plays Rugby. Tom is Rugby. You know this because all his pictures are action shots of him playing rugby, or of him sinking a pint at Terrace with the lads, or of him getting sweaty on the dance floor in a beer-drenched shirt and tie at Mischief.

The deeply repressed truth is that Tom actually hates Rugby and wants to take up ballet lessons, he’s basically Billy Elliott but he’ll only tell you that if the Tinder chat gets real.

The classic fuckboy

His pictures are a carefully curated compilation of him posing topless in front of his bathroom mirror. His chirpsing strategy? An irresistible cocktail of deplorable dick-pics, cheesy chat-up lines and increasingly aggressive requests for nudes.

Google “pictures of guys at Space nightclub” for more details.

The student brand ambassador

His Tinder-aesthetic is pin-stripped suits and free Prossecco from all the networking events he goes to. While most students scoff at the prospect of selling themselves to the corporate world, he can’t bloody wait for it.

Instead of doing a study abroad year somewhere sunny and exotic, he opted for a placement year at KPMG in London. He pretty much missed the entire point of being a student but to be fair, he’s sound at Microsoft excel.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get to work for him one day.

The one who’s done a year abroad He’ll bang on incessantly about his time in Valencia in a desperate attempt to conceal the fact that he’s insufferably boring and spent the duration of his travels crying to his Mum on Skype.

You’ll go for tapas in town where he’ll insist on calling the waiter ‘señor’ and ordering his food in broken Spanish. Later on you’ll go for drinks at Revs and cringe in the corner while he beckons you to salsa with him to a Drake track.

The postgrad boy

He could be 28, he could be 48, you can’t be sure. His thick facial hair and receding hairline bear witness to a life spent in libraries. Hot. His pictures are mostly selfies taken from a weird below-the-chin camera angle just like when your grandma face-times you.

He’ll offer to take you to Old Bar and woo you with exhilarating details of his Phd in Astrobiology. Afterward you’ll go to Fruity where he’ll bust a couple tentative moves on the dance-floor before collapsing with muscle cramp in his lower back.

The artsy-sensitive soft-boy

There’s a photo of him not smiling looking longingly into the sunset with a grainy retro filter. A photo of him not smiling while sipping a fairtrade espresso and reading Kafka in an coffee shop thats definitely not Starbucks. Oh and look, there’s another photo of him not smiling while strumming an acoustic guitar and looking pensively into a bonfire.

His first message: “You just made being an artist harder because I’ll never create anything as beautiful as you”. He’ll ask for X-rays instead of nudes “because its whats on the insides that counts” and if you turn him down he’ll say he’s only on Tinder ironically, anyway.

Your first date is a french film at Hyde Park Picture House. Next thing you know, you’ll be looking through his vinyl collection and listening to him say things things like “we accept the love we think we deserve” before he reaches for his sketchbook and asks to draw you like one of his french girls.

EdgyAF though.

The ‘started his own night at Wire’ boy

In his Lupton days he was a lowly No Curfew promoter, but now he’s in final year he’s his boss, calling his own shots.

You’ve probably never even heard of the Norwegian soft-techno night he set up and thats precisely why its sick. He’ll invite you to come along “if you like”, and you will, only to be ignored by him the entire night as he lurks behind the DJ booth with his intimidatingly cool friends.

The next day he’ll message you to ask if you had fun and whether you wanna hang out again.

The Charles morris boy

From Hollister T-shirts and bottles of grey goose in Sixth Form, to Supreme hoodies and cans of Red Stripe in Freshers – his pictures tell a story of a boy who adapts based on his surroundings, just like a really shit chameleon.

His attempts at disguising his bourgeoise background by effecting a faux cockney accent, bemoaning Leeds’ gentrification and referring to his coke dealer as ’bruv’ aren’t fooling anyone.

You’ll be sat in his Storm Jameson ensuite nodding along while he pours you another glass of vino and recalls how rough it was growing up in Tunbridge Wells, and how grateful he feels to be around like-minded people ‘up norf’.

You’ll positively hate yourself the next morning but the free breakfast at The Refectory will make everything okay.

The Indie-Rock boy

Everyone knows British indie music died a slow and painful death some time in the late noughties, but someone forgot to tell this guy.

His photos are a throw-back to everything guys wanted to be in 2006: greasy hair, a cigarette in his mouth, grungey leather jackets, deep V-necks, skinny jeans and chequered vans. All his mates get really excited for him whenever ‘Last Night’ by The Strokes comes on at Fruity.

He’s basically a scruffy Alex Turner ten years too late.

The Leeds Snowrider

Photos: GOPro fisheye shots of him doing ‘wicked tricks and shit’ on his snowboard, selfies with his colourful sunglasses and grey beanie, topless photos on the top of a mountain, gurning his face off during the après ski at La Folie Douce.

He’ll take you to a Snowrider social at Faversham and force you to partake in some weird hazing ceremony where you have to ‘golfball’ your drink just to prove that your a ‘chill ski girl’. Also he’ll keep calling you ‘dude’ and force you to watch Red Bull extreme skiing videos, which after a few hours becomes tiresome. When summer comes along he sits at home alone on his xbox dreaming of the winter’s first snow.

The nice Jewish boy

He’s got brown eyes and hair. He’s studying medicine or law – he’d love to be studying something more creative but his dad assured him that no one ever made a living from ‘the Arts’.

Your housemate is a mutual friend from that summer camp they went on as kids, and although he’s vertically challenged (he’s pushing 5’6), he makes up for it with a great sense of humour, irrational obsession with sushi, unrelenting pessimism and a general refusal to engage in any sort of confrontation.

Oh and he’ll also probably forward your tinder conversation to his mum for approval. But what a mensch!

The exotic foreigner 

He tells you he’s only in town for a couple of nights and wants someone to show him around.

The opening message: “So how does this sound – You join me now, I take you out, we have a fancy dinner, maybe you fall in love, and then we go from there”.

Truth be told, if it weren’t for his tanned olive skin, mesmerizing dark eyes, chiseled jawline and impeccable facial hair, you might actually consider saying no. But when with a guy from Rome….

Illustrations by Georgia Inerfield, you can follow her Behance page here.