Tinder has accomplished a lot of things since its 2012 launch: It boasts 21 million matches each day, has sparked numerous engagements and recently made its first match in Antarctica.
Now, the notorious "hookup app" can add "reuniting long-lost siblings" to that growing list: After having been out of touch for the last 15 years, a brother and sister were reunited by chance after they matched on Tinder this year.
Separated 15 years ago: When their parents split in 1999, siblings Erik de Vries and Josephine Egberts were broken apart. De Vries, along with his twin brother Maarten, moved with their father to Belgium, while his little sister remained in the Dutch city of Breda, according to the NL Times. The siblings lost touch over the years, and Erik de Vries was unaware of Egberts' whereabouts.
De Vries, now 24, eventually moved back to the Netherlands for school, and in March, like any other young adult, joined Tinder and started swiping.
"The first time I swiped her profile I had absolutely no idea," de Vries told Mic. "To be honest, it hasn't been on my mind in the past few years after Maarten, my brother, and I finished a failed search for Josephine a few years ago."
And yet he happened to swipe right, assuming Egberts was just a nice stranger. So de Vries started talking to her like anyone else. "In our first conversation, I was actually flirting with her, so the conversation was very superficial," he said.
Swiping, then connecting the dots: But after a few exchanges, some details started emerging. "In our next conversation, I started to get some clues and figured she might actually be my sister. This kind of shocked me, so I decided not to contact her for a few days," he said. Curiosity eventually got the best of him, so he confronted his Tinder match about her full identity. The two exchanged stories about their pasts — parents with a rocky divorce, long lost siblings — and soon realized: They were brother and sister.
"The fact that we had a lost sister and she had lost her twin brothers did give her suspicion as well," de Vries said. According to the NL Times, the two siblings met up a week later.
Sjoerd Zwart, a writer for an online dating review website in the Netherlands called Datingsite Kiezen, got wind of the story from a friend, who also knew de Vries, Zwart told Mic. So earlier this month, he reached out to de Vries and ended up bringing all three siblings together for a family portrait, their first in 15 years.
"When I saw him, it was suddenly very clear," Egberts, now 22, told Datingsite Kiezen. "It was so special to see my own blood brother again after 16 years."
For all the cynicism over Tinder and the vapid, sex-fueled relationships it breeds, the trio is a striking reminder that apps like Tinder can bring all sorts of people together — even those looking for that other important relationship, siblings.
And we bet the three won't be ghosting each other anytime soon.
April 22, 2015, 7:58 a.m.: This story has been updated to remove an image.
