Cyber Stalking. 40% of People Can’t be Wrong. Can They?
I'm not sure where I saw the stat and, hell, I don't even know if it's true… What I recall hearing was that 40% of people research their dates/potential suitors, with over 50% of those surveyed saying that they'd call the whole thing off if they found just one weird thing about their beau… Call it “Googling” or whatever you like. But it's definitely it's definitely the guilty pleasure of cyber-stalking. Plain and simple.
The number shocked the fuck out of me. I'd have expected closer to 90% given how many people I spoke to about this admitted that they cyber-stalked their companions. I've done it, too. I'm not trying to place myself on a pedestal, y'all. The numbers don't lie though, do they? So, what do we do about it?
We Take Our Medicine and Show the World We Ain't Got Shit to Hide!
In short, it all comes down to a simple philosophy: Do you care what a significant other finds out about you on the internet? If you're not doing anything wrong, what's the big deal? Right? I'm not doing anything wrong here, but many women feel “weird” about the fact I have a dating blog. Women feel like they're research material. I actually don't date women for the joy of writing about them. At this point, believe it or not, I'm actually trying to find “the one.”
A Google Search of me will let you in on what I do and quickly lead you to other projects I'm involved in. I don't mind, go ahead and search me up! A woman will know I'm a business owning, WordPress Loving, Little Black Dress chaser of unparalleled equal and never even have to ask about it. That search will inevitably lead up to this here blog. It just will and if one goes through this blog, clicking the reasons you shouldn't date me link plus reading through a number of other articles one will find everything they need to know about me. They can cast their judgement and women often do. I doesn't matter if I'm nice, or an asshole; my whole life is there easily stalked by any mildly motivated person.
On OkCupid, I put a link of a Google Search of myself on my profile and also a link to the Urban Dater. Left my profile untouched for a week. No messages, plenty of visitors, I sent messages to each woman and got zero replies. The following week (this week) I took them down. How'd I do then, the week following? About the same number of visits, five messages from different women and a few quick match likes. Not staggering figures, but I do believe that, that I got any interactions at all is due to removing the links I posted on my profile. It doesn't take much to send women running online (goes for men, t00). Simple modifications I made on my profile had helped boost engagement from women on OkCupid and it was minor stuff. Again, it doesn't take much and in the world of Online Dating, you don't want to give someone the slightest bit of doubt causing them to click to the next profile.
This isn't a tale of caution as much as it is a sign of the times. Information is readily available and people can and will find it and make a judgement on you based on their findings. People will scatter if they see the slightest grey area to question. So be careful what you put up there; you might just be making your road to happiness a little more bumpy than you thought….
Apparently my online antics scare women off. Who knew?
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