Move Over Raya: In Its Hey-Day, Twitter Spawned Many a Celeb Romance. Here Are a Few

As surely as Virginia is for lovers, Twitter.com is famously—and delightfully—for haters. But for a fair amount of celebrities, this hellsite (I say that with great affection) that many of us have called home for the last decade was also something of a matchmaker. And as this website burns down in a fiery conflagration of billionaire incompetence, I think it’s worth celebrating some of the iconic ships that Twitter once set out to sea.

Sure, it’s not exactly novel to find romantic partners or hook-ups on social platforms via risky DM or “liking” a thirst trap at a certain hour of the night. But Twitter has been a unique space, in that extremely famous, extremely beautiful people were constantly, as the adage goes, shooting their shot with each other and doing so very publicly. And, often enough, they did so with great, lasting success.

Look no further than Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal’s engagement confirmed earlier this month. This was how it started:

And two years later, here they are, engaged and certain to have beautiful, perennially wistful-looking children who resemble characters in a dreamy A24 movie.

Bridgers is famously good at Twitter. If this website goes down, I’ll be extremely pissed more so for her than anyone else. Yes, she and Mescal are also cute on Instagram (see below), but there’s just no topping their Twitter origin story.

Incidentally, Bridgers and Mescal’s Twitter love story isn’t even the horniest we’ve seen. For that, I give you:

Months later, Munn was pregnant with Mulaney’s baby, and the two now share son Malcolm Hiệp Mulaney, born around this time last year. Considering Mulaney, a former, self-proclaimed wife guy, was still married to Anna Marie Tendler at the time that Munn sent the above tweet, the timing of their relationship has always been in question. But whatever criticisms you may have of Munn and Mulaney’s love affair, don’t blame Twitter. Before Twitter sinks, I highly recommend tweeting, “Sending SO MUCH love and support to [your crush’s name]. You got this. ❤️⚡️,” and doing some serious manifesting.

And then, of course, there are the more wholesome celebrity unions the bird app has brought forth. I give you: Bachelor Nation’s Wells Adams and Modern Family alum Sarah Hyland.

“OH MY GOD @WellsAdams IS THE FRIKKIN BARTENDER?! Best. Season. Ever. #BachelorInParadise,” Hyland tweeted in August 2017. In 2018, Hyland confirmed on Jimmy Kimmel Live that shortly after her tweet, Adams slid in her DMs, and the rest is history. Twitter remained a staple of their relationship, as Adams would frequently reply to Hyland’s social media critics by fighting for her honor with such classic lines as, “eat shit.” They recently married.

Of course, not every celeb-ship that got its start on Twitter has been successful. Many, in fact, have not. In 2013, NBA star Nick Young and Iggy Azalea began dating shortly after Young tweeted that Azalea was his #WCW. Three years later, the break-up bled onto Twitter.com, too. “I broke up with Nick because I found out he had brought other women into our home while I was away and caught them on the security footage,” Azalea tweeted.

Rita Ora and Calvin Harris reportedly met on Twitter, too, but more importantly and more publicly, they also broke up on the platform. In 2014, Harris confirmed their breakup via tweet, apparently, before even breaking up with Ora. See, this is why I don’t trust men who post.

Meanwhile, Amber Rose DM’d Wiz Khalifa on Twitter shortly after reading Khalifa’s comments about her in an interview. She told Us Weekly in 2012:

“Initially we met through Twitter. He did an interview about me and the guy who interviewed him asked, ‘If there was one girl in the world who would you be with?’ He said ‘Amber Rose’—and then I hit him on twitter, and I said, ‘That’s really cute’ and we fell in love!”

The pair married in 2013 and finalized their divorce—not over Twitter!—in 2016.

And then, of course, there’s the brief romance between former Bachelor Colton Underwood and Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, who dated from 2016 to 2017. It started with a Yahoo! Sports video in which Underwood addresses Raisman and tells her if she’s “ever in San Jose and wants to go on a double-date with me and Andrew and Shawn, let me know.” Shortly after, Raisman tweeted at him, “thanks for the sweet video…. looking forward to meeting you :).” He replied, “Anytime! Looking forward to meeting you too. Safe travels back, see you soon!” Suffice to say, things did not work out between the two, but for reasons quite unrelated to Twitter.

Yet, perhaps the ultimate, doomed love story that began on Twitter was that between Elon Musk, the man who’s currently running this website into the ground, and Grimes. Legend has it they met in 2018 shortly after Musk wanted to tweet a (this should go without saying) bad joke about AI, only to find the singer had already tweeted it. By June, knowing Grimes’ position against capitalism, Musk, the world’s foremost wealth hoarder, was already tweeting excruciatingly horny shit like this:

Maybe lighting Twitter and $44 billion on fire is, for Musk, a cathartic act akin to burning photos and memorabilia from a past relationship for normal people?

In any case, Twitter is dead, and with it, perhaps, love itself. How are thirsty celebs ever to meet each other, now?