Beware of Online Dating!
By Natalia Consumi
Feeling lonely or in need of a new romance, but can’t quite find the right person? Then do what so many people around the world— from their teenage to twilight years— are now doing; online dating.
It’s a chance to connect, to meet people like you. Thanks to algorithms that follow a mathematic formula, online dating sites are programmed to set you up with people who have the same interests as you. They will help find your Prince Charming or your future wife.
There are many couples out there that have met through the Internet, clicked and settled down to spend the rest of their lives together. For people like Amy Webb, who met her husband through a match making site, everything turned out great. She was set up with a man who shared the same passions as her; and she now lives a happy life with him and their daughter. But of course, before she met him, she had to meet numerous men who weren’t what they said they were. Because let’s face it, if you have the chance to make yourself appear a little more polished than you actually are, you would definitely take it. Other men lied to her, and she bought it, trusting everything that came her way. Why wouldn’t she? She had no reason not to.
So very often people make up identities, stories, lives, for their own pleasure, so desperate for a companion that they are prepared to go to huge extents to obtain one. Sue Langford met a man online that claimed to be an ex-military soldier and that had just broken off a long relationship with his girlfriend. Sue and her new virtual boyfriend got along great, and she slowly fell in love a little more every time she read his messages, and he claimed that her feelings were reciprocated. Eventually, he managed to convince her to visit him, and as soon as she did, he proposed to her. She was so caught up in her fantasy world that she agreed to marry a complete stranger, a person she had only truly just met. Sue soon discovered that he had never been in the military, and everything he’d told her had been a lie. He was schizophrenic, bi-polar with homicidal rage and had 25 different personalities. She broke the engagement off shortly after discovering this, and was lucky to leave with her life.
Many times, people online want more than a relationship, and are willing to trick you into trusting them. They can manipulate you and pull every one of your strings until you have no choice but to give them what they want. Until you are so filled with what you think is love that you let him/her take away parts of you, until your heart is truly broken. Nancy Fields Peterson was subject to such trickery. After having been with a man for nine months, a man she had met through the Internet, Nancy couldn’t help but fall head over heels in love. He seemed to be perfect. She was willing to give up everything she had to spend the rest of her life with him. She even flew out to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to meet him for a holiday. Only when she got to the airport, he wasn’t there to meet her, where he promised he would be. She contacted him, asking him where he was, to which he gave her directions to a hotel, where he was supposedly meant to pick her up, apologize and take her out on a date— only he never turned up. She flew back home the next day, devastated. After much harassment, Nancy eventually agreed to send him five thousand dollars. She never heard from him again.
These people and so many more, have been lied to, tricked and fooled countless times, and for what? Love? The idea of love? Every time we listen to music or watch a movie or pass by a billboard we have the concept of love injected into our hearts, our brains, our system. To the point that we feel empty without it. We take measures that we know are dangerous in the hopes of finding it, and yet we cast a blind eye to the likely chances of things going wrong, taking the risk because hope is so strong. But sometimes, too much hope can be a bad thing. Sometimes, hope can harm. Sometimes, hope can kill.