The Pros, Cons & Inevitabilities of Searching Your Date Online
Photo: Getty Images
Ten years ago, you learned about a person on the first date. Now, unless they live in a cave, you can find everything there is to know on the Internet. Facebook will tell you what random friend from 5th grade you have in common and search results will alert you to a person’s achievements (or criminal records). Via Instagram, you can actually see what your date did last weekend, and what their last boyfriend or girlfriend looked like. Twitter lets you know what they read—and if they can crack a joke in 140 characters. So by the time you sit down at the bar for your first drink, what’s left to discover?
Actor and model Tyrese recently made headlines because he was furious that a date had looked up his net worth online. He posted this on Instagram: “… I was hanging out with this girl and my phone died so I asked her if I could Google something on her phone…Soon as I went to her Safari web browser THIS popped up…This B went online to see what my net worth was…What in the F is going on out here????”
What’s going on is that everyone’s greedy for information. On a recent date, one man couldn’t believe I hadn’t searched him online. He readily confessed to searching me and showing his friends the image results. And as I started to ask more people, I discovered that I’m the odd one for hoping to get to know a person in real life before I fall for the expertly curated, well-filtered version put forth online. “I’ve gone to public records and ancestry.com,” says Kim, 29, a graduate student.
“The furthest I’ve gone is search and Facebook and Instagram,” says James, 32, a New York-based writer. “Twitter can be calamitous. The equivalent of an earnest photo posted to Instagram, in 140 characters, can be stomach-turning.”
Everyone I asked had a story: one woman was caught snooping on LinkedIn; another’s friend discovered her boyfriend on Tinder—he’d posted a picture of the two of them and cut her out; one girl found her date’s foreign girlfriend; one discovered his potential love was a bad artist, “Burning Man-level bad.” Alex, a 31-year-old actor, says, “The worst thing I found was zero digital footprint. Not even a Linkedin profile? Is she the uni-bomber?”
But even those who didn’t find anything scary felt less than great about their own self post-deep dive. Both men and women told me they felt everything from “a slight tinge of disappointment” to “guilty.” The last time I dove into a man’s Instagram account, my stomach turned. “I feel hideous,” says Stacey, 35, a graphic designer in New York.
So why do we do it? “I’d take back the days of landlines and romance in a second,” Stacey adds. “But the fact is, we are in a need to know world and I need to know what I am stepping in to.” Did Tyrese’s date need to know his net worth? Probably not. (All she needs to know is that they wouldn’t keep making Fast & Furious sequels so furiously if they weren’t making bank.) But with so much information readily available, it becomes about self-control. You’re probably not going to go out and buy a dozen cookies to eat on your own, but if someone puts a plate in front of you, well, how can you not?
Do you search your date online? Vote below, and tell us how it makes you feel in the comments.
*Names have been changed so that when you search these people online, you can't find them talking about searching you!
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