Critic Te Ārohi can verify that this celebrity is indeed a household name in Aotearoa. We’ve seen the messages, listened to voice memos, and seen the verified account linked to everything. We just don’t want to get in legal trouble by naming this guy.
When I was 19, my flatmates and I would sometimes pass our spare time by playing a cult favourite game – Tinder. One night, I came across an incredibly well-known Kiwi celebrity. Before I could even register the insanity of the situation, I realised that he had Super Liked me already.
For the uninitiated, a Super Like is Tinder’s “I really, really want you to notice me” button. You get a limited number of these, unless you're willing to fork out actual money. According to WikiHow (a trusted source), a mere three Super Likes can cost about $9.99, and 50 will set you back $75. So yeah – a celebrity using one on me felt like a fever dream unfolding in my very own flat.
What was even a bigger shock was checking his age.
He was over 15 years older than me, which raised two immediate issues (obviously).
Firstly: Why was some guy I watched on TV with my parents deciding to try and match with me? (ew). Second: given he was that much older than me (nearly 40!), it would have meant that he had his age range customised to show 19 year olds (double ew). I eventually realised a third issue (because it somehow gets worse): he wasn’t even in Dunedin. This man had geographically extended his search radius to reach Cute Hot Teenage Dunedin Girls Near You.
Horrifying. But also, intriguing.
Nonetheless, I matched with him – mainly because I believed it was someone pretending to be him. Shouldn't the single, high-profile kiwis like him be on Raya, not on Tinder with the rest of us normies?
We started chatting. At some point I accused him of being a catfish, and he told me to message his official Instagram to confirm. My flatmate and I, thinking we had caught him in his lie, messaged his Instagram feeling smug only to absolutely lose our minds when he actually replied back.
There was no trick. Same account, same guy.
Given the absurdity of the situation, we still weren’t totally convinced. We thought that maybe it was a social media manager or something fucking with us. Still sceptical, we pushed for proof. He refused to send a photo but eventually sent a voice memo. It was unmistakably him. Same voice, same tone – just now directed at a teenager in Dunedin.
At this point, boredom took over. My flattie and I decided I should keep going, just to see what his deal was. I told him the age gap wasn’t an issue, just to bring it up again to see if he had come to his senses or anything. But god, he just kept insisting it was “crazy,” which was pretty bold, considering he had Super Liked me. When I questioned his allegedly-serendipitous Super Like, he tried to justify it to me by saying he must have found me good looking, but didn't realise I was in Ōtepoti… and 19. Interesting.
We continued chatting, and he began asking me questions about what I did and so on. A real gentleman. Not even chatting to a celebrity makes you immune from dry chats. I complained to him about how shitty my Castle Street flat was, and he insisted I buy warmer stuff for winter. Sensing an opportunity, my flatmate and I laboured the point that I was incredibly poor and cold and probably wouldn’t make it through the night without a big, strong New Zealand male celebrity to save me (financially). He didn’t send me any money. What fucking ever.
Eventually, he added me on Snapchat. His account was, of course, created under a name that was not the one I knew him by. I hoped that moving the chat to Snap would finally get him to show himself. I began sending him face snaps, to which he would reply in chat saying how hot I was, and occasionally bringing up how “crazy” the age gap was.
I was beginning to think it was pretty “crazy” too.
He sent one (1) photo back, which I promptly posed with while my flatmate took a picture. It remains one of the only pieces of evidence that this was not an elaborate, deeply niche hallucination or a prank by some deranged social media manager.
But the novelty wore off fast. There’s only so long you can sustain a conversation built entirely on being called “sexy” by someone closer in age to your parents before it starts to feel less funny and more…grim. A friend messaged from my account asking why he was so dry.
He replied: “How do you suggest… I get wet?”
That message was basically the last straw for me: the novelty and “craziness” wore off and it started being exactly what it was: a grown man knowingly messaging a 19-year-old and pretending to be conflicted about it.
Like most garden-variety talking stages, the whole thing just fizzled out unspectacularly. Now, it’s my favourite party story. A guaranteed conversation starter. Drop “one time [REDACTED] hit me up on Tinder when I was 19” into a room, and suddenly you’re the belle of the ball. People are always shocked, and I have begun to be too.
The older I get, the more I feel grossed out whenever I see stuff about him online, knowing the real “crazy” way he acted toward me. Luckily I had fabulous flatmates around me. I had people to sanity-check the situation, to laugh it off with, to share the discomfort. Not everyone does. And it makes you wonder how many other “crazy” stories like this aren’t just stories. I wonder if he knows he has become the most iconic piece of lore to come out of that fabled second year flat.
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. It’s never too late to talk about it or get support. The University’s Te Whare Tāwharau offers help for students dealing with sexual harm or intimate partner violence, whether it’s recent or years ago. You can also contact Safe to Talk by calling 0800 044 334 or texting 4334 which is a free and confidential service available all across the motu.
Out of curiosity, I messaged him again while writing this. Just something casual. He replied quickly, with no acknowledgement of our history. I also had my friend hit him up to see if he would reply to just anyone on Insta, but he never replied to her – making me sure that he remembered who I was. The last thing I asked was why he hadn’t been in touch when he was last in Dunedin, to which he responded that it was because his life was “in shambles!”
It sure is.
