Catfish

I’m sure your mother told you, as did mine, that you should not talk to strangers. Trust has to be gained over time whether you meet someone off or online. It’s one of the things about online dating that I believe keeps a lot of people from trying it. It goes against everything we are taught throughout our lives and its important to stay safe.

As the popular documentary Catfish has shown, it is easy for people to be drawn into “relationships” online with people who are not who they say they are. So much of our information is online, coupled with the recent reports of various internet sites trading information, letting their staff have profiles to boost the number of times people have been looked at, leaving old profile information in public view to boost their member numbers.

Trusting someone is difficult, even more so when, like me, you may have been hurt so meeting people online can be troublesome since I have a tendancy to assume that most people are lying, all the time! Recently though, I seem to be going through a spate of my very own catfish type men. Catfish one was called Henry.

Henry was extremely cute in his pictures, tall, lives fairly close to me. We quickly swapped numbers and were regularly texting. I told him I was busy and couldn’t meet up for a while but we arranged to meet in the first week of July and in the meantime we would get to know each other by texting. However I started to notice a pattern,

Henry would text me in the morning on my way to work, just general chit chat, and a couple of times during the day, to which I would reply when I was free, sometimes on the train on the way home. I’d hear nothing until the next day and a pattern began to emerge. He would only text me during the day, not lots of messages but one around lunchtime and one in the afternoon. If I replied on the way home I’d hear nothing.

One day he text me in the afternoon and rather than reply right away or on the way home I left it, sister_single, who I am going to have to give the name Megan (I have two sisters and it gets confusing) suggested not reply until that late evening, as a test. I replied at about 8.30pm and heard nothing again. So

Megan and I launched phase two of the catfish plan. I tried to look the guy up on Facebook using the names he had given me. Nothing. So I went all Miss Marple on his ass and googled his telephone number. One hit caught my eye, an advert for a cleaner, inviting applications. It asked the applicants to speak to Sophie and gave Henry’s number.

This is the point at which Megan and I went a bit far. The next day Megan withheld her number and called, pretending to be calling about the job. Henry didn’t give much away on the phone other than to ask her to send a CV to an email address.

It didn’t tell me anything about his status and still he would not reply in the evening. Almost as soon as we hatched our plan he stopped texting entirely. Either he realised it was a plan (doubtful since there was no connection to me) or he is married or partnered up and realised it was going to get to complex. Mystery unsolved.

The second of my disappointments involves a man I met offline, out and about who told me he was single and gave me his card so that I might call him. This guy was not as clever at covering his tracks. The day after he gave me his card I emailed him to say it was nice to meet him.

Before I hit send I did a quick Facebook check on him but found nothing but I figured it was because I had his work email address not his home one. But you can see how I am getting ever more dependent on the net for checking up on my dates before I even go on them.

Seeing as I couldn’t find anything on him I sent my message anyway. He replied quickly and in a spectacular display of stupidity signed off with a shortened version of his actual name. Of course I am straight on Facebook again searching for him using this shortened name.

One match (it’s an unusual name) the profile picture stares back at me, the man, a pretty woman with her arm around him and two little girls approximately three and six. It’s the name guy alright because he has his workplace registered and it’s the same as on his business card.

He is in a relationship, he is a dad clearly. All this information without sending a friend request. Now people may think that it’s me who is in the wrong for searching for information on my dates before I so much as meet them but frankly I don’t have loads of time on my hands to go on dates with someone who is married/in a relationship only to find out later that they are with someone.

I think this kind of online nosiness (which lots of you ladies have done DON’T LIE!) is justified because at least one of these men (and these are just two examples there are others) got caught out. So while people are stupid with their privacy settings and men lie, I will continue to shamelessly check up on people.

In other dating news I am supposed to be going on a date that I really want be bothered to go on, Dongle thinks I am being mean. He just has nothing to say and I find myself repeating what I have told him several times. I’m not convinced it is going to make for an interesting date. When I suggested meeting p for a drink he countered by asking me if I would rather go for a meal/bowling/cinema.

None of these options have a quick get out so I was resistant. Then he dropped the bombshell. He doesn’t really drink.

I’ll just let you absorb that.

 Right there and then I knew we weren’t going to get on. So I did something a bit naughty, I may have made myself sound slightly like an alcoholic. I told him that I go out a lot, which in fairness isn’t a lie but I made myself out to be one step away from meeting attendance.

 It didn’t put him off so now I am either going to have to go (with an open mind cos he might be a nice guy) or just cancel. I can’t decide which.

I also met a guy at the train station recently who is currently reading this from his sick bed having just had an operation, seeing as he reads the blog he is worthy of a mention, hope you’re feeling better!

And then you get messages like this one, from someone on one of the websites. and trust me when I say his scrambled face looks so much better than his photo!  Sigh.....

Until next time Love SG