Intimate O(pi)nions

Posts Tagged ‘myths’

When people talk about online dating, it always comes up that it’s very dangerous. I disagree. While everyone knows that there are dangers involved, we also know that going to your favourite night club and getting pissed out of your brain is not exactly safe either. It’s not like these predators were born with the dawn of online dating, they existed well before the Internet. In the “real life” when we go out, we are used to following certain safety rules, like we don’t leave our drinks unattended so someone can spike them, we don’t hitch hike for a ride with strangers… Well, some people do, but we all know that’s not very wise, but we certainly don’t take walking short cuts through the ghettos, right? In the real life, even after you’ve made all precautions possible, you will be in trouble before you know it, and you can disappear without a trace.

And that is where the biggest difference comes with the Internet. EVERYTHING you do is logged. It doesn’t take much effort for the police to track down the site you used to get the date, with whom and from there move on to what else has your latest date been up to and with whom. That’s not much of a consolation if you have already been killed, but the fact is that the predators know this as well as the rest of us. Even though they could cover their own tracks online, they can’t cover yours. Unfortunately, they too can give false information on the site, and hide who was using it. Therefore, the most important thing for you to remember is NEVER to go on a date without seeing your date’s photo, and if your date doesn’t look like the one you thought you’re going to date, get out. It’s not being shallow, it’s being safe (and don’t get greedy if he/she turns out looking better than the photo, as in not the same person -better). And a good precautionary measure to take is to print out the profile and leave a copy of it by your desk with a date and place written on top if you don’t want to tell your friends. (Nobody needs to know you do that, right?)

The thing that people consider dangerous online, is that you can pretend to be anything you want, and that it’s completely anonymous. What they don’t seem to get, is that the same is true for everyone. You too can be completely anonymous, and only tell things that you want to tell. To go further, you can also lie to people face to face. People who are comfortable writing lies are most likely comfortable telling lies to your face as well. If they’re not, then you’re going to find it out on your first date, no harm done, right? The fact is, that you won’t get in trouble online, you can only get in trouble when online date turns into an offline date. The dangers online is not the anonymity of it, but the fact that there’s a lot more unknowns involved, but the same unknowns that make it dangerous narrow down the amount of offenders who are skilled enough to abuse those unknowns, as you need to be quite the hacker to actually sneak your way into your life without you enabling them. It’s a lot easier to do offline anyway, but if you want to do it online, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do it on Facebook. Facebook reveals a lot more information about you than most dating sites ever will. You’re surrounded by your friends, but how many times have you accepted a friend request from a person you don’t exactly know, simply because you didn’t want to be rude?

In the “real life”, if someone attacks you, they are not very likely to do that where people can see them. And obviously, it could be any number of people. The attacker has to do a lot of attacks before they can narrow down the possible offenders without any eye witnesses. Online, it only takes one well prepared date to go wrong and the police will at least know what their suspect looks like.

Again, while IRL you can get into trouble before you see a hint of danger, online you can talk to the person for months before actually meeting them. You can keep your antennas up and see if what the person is telling you adds up. You can have webcam conversations that confirm that the profile matches the person. If the person has a violent volatile personality, you will know it sooner rather than later by the things he says to you and how he says them. If you had met this person offline, you probably would be at his apartment by then, but online, you’re still in your own, safe and sound.

The thing is; you can only get in trouble in the real life. Online, the worst they can do to you is absolutely destroy your reputation by lies or hurl abuse at you, but there’s nothing stopping people from doing that offline as well. But that is where it stops online, unless you have revealed information you shouldn’t have. Online people can only hurt you by the things you tell them. You control your mouth, not your friends, not your blabbering mother, not some random by-passer that sees you going into your house. You take the risks online, they are not taken for you like they often are offline. Offline you can be pressured into going to an after-party or to take a ride with a bunch of guys, and even though you have a feeling it’s not a good idea, your friend is insisting on going and you simply have to go with her to make sure she’s okay. Online, things like that simply don’t happen. It’s just about you and what you want to tell people. In that way, you are in complete control.

So, the safe steps in order of execution:

1. Don’t reveal personal information

2. Check that your photos don’t reveal where you are

3. Demand a photo

4. Have a web cam conversation

5. Have a voice conversation over the phone or preferably on Skype.

6. Print out the profile and put in the date time and the place and any other relevant information you have. (What kind of a car he/she drives. Cars are hard to hide.)

7. Go on a date on a well lit public place during day time or early evening. If the photo doesn’t match the face, get out.

8. If your gut instinct warns you, get out.

9. Keep your phone with you.

10. That’s it. Most likely all your precautionary measures have been wasted and you had fabulous time.

Popularity: 6% [?]

– and if you think that’s true, I’ll show you a sad loser. *Holds up a mirror*

I mean, if you won’t try online dating because you think it’s for desperate people, what exactly are you saying? If you join up, you’ll get infected? People change into desperate losers because they join an online dating site? Is this the same kind of effect as listening to records backwards allegedly has? Doesn’t your attitude simply reflect a poor self-esteem? Aren’t you simply not doing something because you are afraid of a social stigma? How does that make you any better than the people who hold their heads up high in their profile picture? Your logic is lost with me.

Sure, if you’re a loser you can try online dating, but sadly you most likely won’t be any more attractive online than you are offline. People don’t change online! If you are a loser, you stay a loser no matter what kind of a monthly payment you make! The same goes with people who hook up with he opposite sex without any problems at all, they continue doing so online, but they have a lot more options to choose from! The advantage of online dating, whether you are a sad loser or not, is that you will multiply your options. That’s it. There are more people that will possibly be interested in you, and on the flip side of the coin, there are more people who you will find interesting. Using online dating doesn’t mean you have to give up or are forced to give up meeting people “in the real life”, it is just another way to meet people, another, very interesting way to do so. It is not necessarily better than doing it IRL, but it is different, and will suit a certain type of personality better, for example those WHO ARE NOT SHALLOW IDIOTS.  Online you actually have to prove you have a brain, in the real life it doesn’t seem to be that big of an issue as long as you have a pulse… (How’s that not desperate?)

What is it about online dating exactly, that you think is desperate? The fact you say that you are out there, single and looking? Didn’t everyone know that yet? If it’s that you actually admit that you want to find someone? In my opinion, it is the most natural thing to want; to find someone to share your life with (or moments even), so how is it desperate to look for love online? Or is it just because you think that the ONLY PEOPLE who use online dating are the outcasts that nobody wants? Here’s a newsflash for you: Most of my friends have found their mates online, and my friends are the type that have to fight the most eager ones off with a stick! I’m not exactly a dog either, and I found my husband online, and HE is the most amazing thing I’ve ever met, and there is no way in hell we would have met in the real life, ever. And to top that off, on average the online started relationships are more balanced and happy, because THEY KNEW WHAT THE OTHER ONE WAS LIKE before they went on to confirm it a “relationship”. You know how in the real life it is very easy to kind of get stuck with someone even though you’re not that into them because you find out too late in that you don’t really like them that much? Online you are more likely to find that out pretty early on, because you are required to communicate.

In my experience online daters are those with an iron strong self-esteem, who don’t give a toss about who is snickering at them feeling all superior because they don’t have a profile online. (At least with a picture on it, right?) Sometimes these strong people get approached as if they were desperate losers, but those hopefuls will be sadly disappointed if they think they’re going to get somewhere that way. But hey, what ever. If this is just another excuse to talk yourself out of doing something you really want to do… Not our loss. Just the next time you decide saying something to those lines, remember my mirror, and when you die alone as the sad loser you are, at least people will say: “Well, at least she wasn’t being desperate!” [/rant]

(So okay, if you are not into online dating it doesn’t automatically make you a sad loser, but it works both ways.)

Popularity: 4% [?]

A very common belief even today is that if a woman has sex with a man on the first date (or even before the first real date) is that he will lose his respect with her. No man will ever marry a woman he had sex with in early times of their relationship – that is what all teen aged girls will be told by some adult in their life. I was lucky that this adult was my auntie instead of my mom or dad, but nevertheless, I did take her words seriously for some time before I realized it was utter garbage. Nobody looses their respect for you, unless you lose it first.

The problem with this is that if you truly honestly believe that good girls don’t have sex on the first date, you WILL lose your respect for yourself after doing it, and that resonates to the man’s reactions towards you – he will no longer respect you either. However, his reactions to you will not change if your attitude towards yourself doesn’t change. I know this first hand.

Some women seem to believe, that sex is the ONLY thing a man could possibly (naturally) want of them. So there are two ways to go with this belief; First option, preferred by the good girls, is to hold the sex as a price for good behavior until the wedding bells toll, hoping that a miracle would occur and he would actually fall in love. The other method is to use it as a price for any interaction with her at all, hoping that by offering sex, he will come back for more for long enough to the miracle of love occurring. Both of these strategies are based on the belief that a woman carries no initial value to a man, apart from what they can do for him sexually. (= Man is too stupid to think for himself). The belief is of course false, and leads to distorted sexual behavior.

Just by chatting about sex online with men I have noticed that they are beyond frustrated by women who won’t even talk about it. They give you praise for telling them the truth of how things are and why women might feel about this or that. This is a global thing; a Turkish guy is just as grateful of it as a Finnish man, who has been surrounded by rather free spirited women all his life. (The difference is that the Turk would probably not marry you, but the Finn would.) The way the men talk about prudish women is far from being respectful. The men sound frustrated and irritated by them, and dare I say, they think prudish women are stupid. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been said to be “a very intelligent woman” because I went down that road and talked about sexuality in general. I didn’t have to tell them details about my sexual preferences, it was enough to take a general approach. Just talking about it like you were the school nurse wins you points.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Online dating is not considered romantic by most people. This is, I think, because these people think it’s all too easy to type in the desired sex, age and location and click “search”. Obviously, they never tried it. Online dating is not easy. The advantages of it lie elsewhere, but it’s not about the ease of it. That assumption is also the reason why so many people fail. They go into it like they were using a shopping cart system, and are disappointed, when the response isn’t “your goods will be delivered to you within 3 working days.”

Dating online is easiest for the people who are fluent in people skills in general. The same people that don’t know what to say to women at a dance club won’t know any better online. The only group that gains significant advantage on online dating is the people who find writing a natural form of communication and speaking directly to people slightly scary – people like myself. This is why the belief that online dating is solely for losers, geeks and nerds is not true. Although geeks surely will find themselves more at home at the computer than at the disco bar, we’re still dealing with real, breathing people.

The advantage of online dating is that you don’t HAVE to go out to look for the right one, you can broaden your search outside your town, state or even outside your country (boy did I take that one to heart!) and do that at the time that is good for you. You will meet a lot more people than you would at your local bar, but you will also meet freaks and weirdoes in the same proportion. I’ve always said that the Internet is a great place for dating if you’re a loser or if you’re too picky for your own good. Being too busy aside, I don’t know why the average Joe would want to do online dating unless just for the interest in the method. That was a big motivator for me – besides being picky – I was utterly interested in the technical side of social internet. I’m betting I am not alone on that one, but there is probably more men out there with that side thought in mind.

Popularity: 1% [?]