By Brittany Frey, Assistant Account Manager
Social networking sites are great outlets to keep in contact with friends and family, and great resources for businesses to reach their target audiences. But when it comes to dating, the online world is a scary place and even scarier if you’re single.
Things are changing. You just don’t meet someone at a high school dance, go out for milkshakes, hit up the 5 and 10 for a chocolate bar and then a few years later, get married, buy a station wagon to cart around
your basketball team size of a family and then a few decades later celebrate your golden wedding anniversary at your neighborhood Elks Lodge. You have to do your research.
Chances are, if you’re playing in the dating arena now, you have met your latest “crush” at the local watering hole. You may not have exchanged phone numbers, but that’s okay as long as you managed to get his name. Thanks to cyberstalking that is the only piece of information that you need.
It doesn’t matter who you are – you can say you’re better than this, and if he didn’t ask for your number he’s just not that into you, and you’ll move on. But you know in the privacy of your own home/office/cubicle/car/bathroom stall etc. you are Googling his name for more details.
You Googled his first name, last name, the city you think he grew up in, the city he lives in now and the bar where you met. All of a sudden Cha-Ching!, he has a Facebook profile and it is not private. This is where it gets good. His profile picture is great, the girls in his party photos don’t seem to be love interests and his hobbies match yours – well probably not, but who cares – you can pretend they do. You decide to click “add as friend.” And then you wait.
A week goes by, he hasn’t accepted. You pump up your stalking efforts -- and look for other social networking sites that he might be on. Is he tweeting? Is he LinkedIn? And then all of a sudden it hits you like a ton of bricks. You’re obsessed. But you realize, you’re not obsessed with him – you’re obsessed with stalking him online.
I love social networking, don’t get me wrong. But when it comes to my love life – it has only added unnecessary stress. Why did he remove his relationship status from his Facebook page? Who is the cute blonde in the newly tagged photo?
There is a benefit to social networking when it comes to dating. Whenever I want to impress a potential suitor – I don’t buy a new outfit, get a new haircut or head out to the bars, I put up a new Facebook picture. Then, I cross my fingers that I get the thumbs-up approval with the caption “Joe Smith likes this.”
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