A few years ago I went to pick up a woman I met on OKCupid for a date, and a friend of hers was there. They kind of over-explained “Oh, she just showed up to say hi” and there was a vague nervousness in the air that even my autistic ass was picking up on. Her friend was playing conspicuously with her phone. I went “Ah, the safety. Need to get a picture?”
Dead silence for about a second and a half, then the friend took a picture, looked at my date, and said “Have fun” and walked out the door.
(I would ordinarily have been clueless, but I’d just been asked to be the safety the previous night.)
My advice to male-presenting folks: recognize that this not your problem. By which I mean, this sort of security check isn’t a problem for you. It doesn’t hurt you. You aren’t being insulted or disrespected. And if you treat it like what it is– a reasonable adaptation to an unreasonable situation– and just roll with it, your dates will be more comfortable, and you will have a better time as a result.
The same applies to phone calls mid-date. Let them answer the damn phone without drama.
They aren’t accusing you of being a dangerous person. The very fact that they are willing to go on a goddamn date with you means that they have extended a certain level of trust. But the fact remains that there isn’t really a way to distinguish between “a man who isn’t dangerous” and “a man who knows how to behave like he’s not dangerous.”
Don’t forget taking and sending a photo of any car you get in <3
I’m not being funny, but men should be taking these precautions too.
Okay I could write a 20 page paper about why this place is more desirable than other platforms but :
Chronological post order
No influencers or corporate personalities
Aggressive monetization & marketing strategies don’t work here
Nobody knows how many followers you have (this is a good thing, trust me, if I had it my way, you wouldn’t even be able to see the number of likes/comments/shares of a post without being its creator)
General anonymity - no pressure to share personal information but the option is always there
Recycled content, this website’s like the radio of social media. Old hit posts from the early 2010s regularly come back in circulation, and trends here actually have staying power. The trends are also organic and not made to sell a song or popularize a product for exactly 1.5 months like tiktok trends that everyone rapidly forgets.
Unlike with Twitter, faceless accounts here are undeniably real people sharing content they like with no incentive to promote products or brands. If somebody gives general advice here, you can be almost certain that it’s not sponsored (and therefore biased toward a certain solution)
