We’ve all been there. The guy you matched with on Tinder looks like a fun house-mirror version of his profile picture, orders piña coladas at a dive bar, and is a secret Trump supporter. Normally in this kind of nightmare scenario, you might pretend to get an emergency phone call from a friend or blame your early departure on a heavy workload. Now, in one innovative U.K. town, all you have to do is ask the bartender for Angela to get out of a miserable, possibly dangerous situation.
The council for Lincolnshire County in east England launched its new sexual violence awareness campaign, #NoMore, in an effort to foster safer environments at bars and create a support system. Signs posted in pubs throughout the county read,
“Are you on a date that isn’t working out? Is your Tinder or POF date not who they said they were on their profile? Do you feel like you’re not in a safe situation? Does it all feel a bit weird? If you go to the bar and ask for ‘Angela’, the bar staff will know you need help getting out of your situation and will call you a taxi or help you out discreetly without too much fuss.”
After Twitter users shared a tweet by one Lincolnshire resident thousands of times, many called for an expansion of this campaign outside of the United Kingdom.
Tactics like these may be a practical solution to a rapidly evolving dating scene. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly a third of American millennials now use online dating as the primary way to meet potential partners—and that means meeting a lot of potentially creepy strangers before finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. As that trend continues and expands, being able to call on Angela might help us all feel a little safer.
