Detailed by the Houston Chronicle recently, a Texas teenager named Michael Ramirez was able to harness the crowd-sourcing power of Twitter to land a prom date with a 19-year-old Houston Texans cheerleader named Caitlyn. After Caitlyn followed Ramirez on Twitter when following a number of Houston Texans fans, Ramirez posed the question “If I get 10,000 retweets will you go to prom with me. you will get asked in a cute way!” to Caitlyn. An active Twitter user, Caitlyn immediately agreed and Ramirez started his quest to get 10,000 retweets.
After Ramirez posted this tweet, the retweets started rolling in and he racked up the entire 10,000 in less than a week. Ramirez’s mother even opened up her first Twitter account to help her son reach 10,000 retweets. Caitlyn, a communications major at the University of Houston, immeidately made plans to meet Ramirez at Churrascos, a Latin American restaurant, prior to the start of prom. As a surprise, she also brought along six other Texans cheerleaders to the dinner to greet Ramirez as well as the local journalists that were covering the story.
Typical of most prom couples, the two exchanged a corsage and boutonniere before heading off in a limo to Ramirez’s prom. While the photos posted on Caitlyn’s Twitter account show the couple having fun at the prom, Caitlyn was ambivalent on the potential of a second date. Ramirez was hopeful however and joked that he was looking forward to a future wedding.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that a high school student has turned to Twitter to get an interesting prom date. During March 2012, a Minnesota teenager was able to land a prom date with a porn star using Twitter. Unfortunately for the teen, the school objected to the pairing and banned the porn star from attending. Of course, this didn’t stop the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to air a humorous segment about it.