On Monday night, a Twitter thread from Lisette Pylant chronicling her incredibly wild "date" went viral. Basically, her night turned into something completely different after five other women showed up, also to see the man she was seeing, in quick succession.
In her tweets, Pylant wrote about how she was meeting up with a guy her friends had set her up with.
In short, Pylant said she wasn't a fan of the dude but decided to stay at the bar because she had a friend who worked there. Then, about 45 minutes later, another girl named Kristen showed up. She was the guy's next scheduled date.
Soon after, another girl — also at the bar to see Justin — shows up. So that's three.
At this point, Pylant thought the whole thing was over — but then her friend at the bar texted to tell her that Justin was on another date. Pylant proceeded to send one of the other girls over to "retrieve his 8pm date."
So then they all ended up hanging out at a nearby bar. Here they are, new friends bonding over a shared dating experience.
A little while passed and then another girl showed up to meet Justin (that makes five), but Pylant's friend "intercepted her" and told her to go meet the others. So now there was a bunch of potential Justin "dates" at the other bar, choosing instead to hang out with each other.
By the time date number five showed up, Justin had well and truly figured the whole thing out and apparently just told her to go meet the other girls.
It all got a bit messy:
And four of the girls became "best friends" at the other bar.
On Twitter, the thread went hugely viral. So far it has over 6,000 retweets (and counting), and is full of people talking about how fantastic the story is.
Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Justin said the whole thing was a misunderstanding, but he understood why some people might be...a bit irritated by the events that took place.
A 28-year-old project manager in Washington, DC, Justin said he had recently broken up with his girlfriend of 18 months and was "actually looking for love."
"I was consciously trying to meet a lot of people, as many as I could, and talk to them first," he said.
"These were not dates — that's the confusion — these were six conversations over a drink. I know I can turn people off and not everyone appreciates my sense of humor, but I was trying to have a quick conversation to screen and get a sense of whether or not we are compatible."
"If that doesn't happen I will politely say 'Hey, this isn't going to work out.' ... I can't figure out who you are by texting you."
Justin said he understood how the night's events had been spun on Twitter.
"She thought it was a real date and was not happy that it didn't turn out to be a real date," he said.
One of the meetups Justin had organized actually went well, he said, and the pair had planned to go on a proper date in a few days.
"I don't know if that's still gonna happen now," he said.
"I'm doing this for a good reason, I'm not trying to convince everyone. I just want to meet a bunch of people and talk to a bunch of people. I'm sure my approach is going to be frowned at, but time is the one thing in life that you should be controlling of because it's the only thing that we have, really."