We often hear about the potential dangers of dating apps (usually from mothers, grandmothers, or other older relatives), but what about the dangers of friendship apps? Signing up to Bumble BFF must’ve sounded like a harmless way to meet a new bestie for TikTok user Kirsten, but it ended up casting her as the protagonist of her own real-life Baby Reindeer nightmare.
Back in 2018, Kirsten met a new friend called Alex on the friend-making app and the pair first met up in person at a dive bar. After a fun night, Alex encouraged Kirsten to add her on the Find My Friend location-tracking app. Yes, you can probably guess where this is going. Unfortunately, Young Kirsten didn’t and thought nothing of sharing her GPS info with Alex.
Fast forward a little bit and Kirsten and Alex have become firm friends — “texting all the time and meeting up 3/4 times a week” kind of firm friends. Alex even introduced Kirsten to her own friendship group, with Kirsten particularly hitting it off with one in the group named Katie. When Alex was out of town one weekend, Kirsten hung out with Katie. Their night out was going fine… Until Kirsten realized she had nine missed calls from Alex and a sinister text which read, “I know what you’re doing. You’d better stop.”
This naturally left Kirsten unsettled, but not as much as what happened that Sunday evening when Alex turned up uninvited at her door. The freaky friend with the severe case of FOMO stated that she didn’t think it was “appropriate” for Kirsten to be hanging out with her friends while she wasn’t there. This kind of behavior was obviously pretty much a friendship killer for Kirsten and she proceeded to distance herself from Alex over the coming weeks.
Unfortunately, this only made Alex clutch on tighter. Alex started making worryingly clingy posts on Instagram, sharing photos of the two of them with captions talking about finding your “twin flame” and how friends can turn out to be your soulmate. At this point, Kirsten blocked her across social media and thought she’d heard the last of Alex. Alas, it wasn’t to be — as she found out when Alex turned up at a date Kirsten was having and kicked up a storm.
Yes, Kirsten had forgotten to turn off Find My Friends.
You might think the story ends there, as a cautionary tale about being careful who you share your location with. But nope, somehow Alex’s obsession with Kirsten got even crazier from there. One day, Kirsten saw furniture being moved into her apartment building and did the neighborly thing of introducing herself to the newbie. Guess what? It was Alex.
What followed was Kirsten doing her best impression of a ninja/spy as her life became a daily game of attempting to avoid Alex at all costs. That wasn’t easy given that Alex made a routine of knocking on her door every evening for 10-minute stretches. Kirsten spoke to the apartment manager about it, but they said they couldn’t do anything unless she wanted to call the police on Alex. As all of her behavior was creepy but not criminal, Kirsten elected not to involve the authorities and bore with it.
A month later, Alex’s stalking had dried up and Kirsten probably assumed she’s moved onto someone else. When she happened to be at the same bar as Alex, Kirsten found out exactly who she’d moved onto: Alex was now dating the guy, named Nick, that Kirsten was going out with before.
So how did it all end? Kirsten moved out of her apartment just to get rid of this person from her life. In 2022, she discovered one more twist: Alex and Nick had gotten married.
As endings go, this isn’t as satisfying as the denouement of Baby Reindeer, as Alex didn’t get her just desserts and comeuppance like the Martha character. Instead she basically forced Kirsten out of her home and stole her ex (Kirsten emphasizes this isn’t a great loss, though). The upcoming Netflix adaptation may need to tweak the story somewhat.
Given the wildness of Kirsten’s experience, some have questioned the veracity of her tale — especially as she already went viral a few months ago for a similarly unbelievable story involving a strange hair stylist. However, Kirsten maintains that everything she shares on TikTok is fact. And the statistics certainly back up her claims. In 2019, 3.4 million Americans — that’s 1.3% of the population — were victims of stalking. It happens, people.
Yet again, TikTok is not doing Bumble any favors.