LONDON -- There are two clear lessons that can be taken from this British man's recent Tinder experiment: (1) footballer Wayne Rooney posts some very strange things on Twitter and (2) those tweets don't tend to work too well when used in a flirting capacity.
Enterprising Londoner Billie shared evidence of his new dating app technique on Twitter yesterday -- at the time of writing, his screengrabs have already been retweeted around 2,000 times.
Tinder using only old Wayne Rooney tweets is not going well pic.twitter.com/agxq7QD9OM— Billie (@Billie_T) October 27, 2015
"For a man who looks like a potato with wool stapled to the top, Wayne Rooney has an obscenely attractive girlfriend," Billie told Mashable. "I was therefore hoping that I, a fellow vegetable lookalike, could land myself an obscenely attractive girlfriend too.
"Also, in many years' time, when both I and Wayne Rooney have passed, thanks to the glory of the Internet, Wayne Rooney tweets will live on. I was hoping that I could trailblaze a path for those in the future in which old Wayne Rooney tweets could be used as a resource for the good of mankind."
When we asked Billie why he decided to carry this experiment out in the first place, he sent the following response: "I was inspired by listening to the new Adele song and the sound of two foxes in my garden having sex. Two very different representations of romance sure, but they both struck a chord and I knew I had to do something about my own love life."
So far the reactions Billie has received have been fairly mixed.
"I'd say the reaction has been a mixture of confusion, disgust and anger," said Billie. "So really no different to my usual dating exploits."
When we asked Billie how he selected which tweets to use, he replied that our question was like asking an arts director how they select which Shakespeare play to put on.
"Each one is a classic in its own right," he explained. "Thankfully, loads of people on Twitter regularly retweet his older tweets so they stay fresh in the memory. I am really hoping that in about 20 years' time people will do GCSE questions on old Wayne Rooney tweets instead of Shakespeare."
Billie told us his next project may feature the tweets of footballer Michael Owen.
"You might be thinking that if Wayne Rooney tweets didn't work, how are the famously boring tweets of Michael Owen going to fare better?" he said. "To that I say you can't get worse than 0% success rate so I have nothing to lose."