Online Dating

In recent years online dating has become very popular. More people are deciding to go online to look for a potential partner. According to StatisticBrain.com, there are 54,250,000 single people online and there are 41,250,000 that have actually tried online dating. That's a lot of people and it doesn't even include other countries. With that many people trying out online dating, impressions are easily made and deception occurs.

When people create their profiles, they have the power to disclose as much or less as they want. They can choose whether or not they want to share their favorite book or height. Some people share too much online but some share too less. For example, on OkCupid, there are some people that include where they go to school and personal things that may potentially be used in a harmful way. But there are also profiles where someone will provide basic information like age, gender, and religious views. This is not very helpful to the person viewing it because they cannot figure out who you with that information. The information provided will give the person viewing it an impression of who you are. Sometimes the impressions lead to false expectations because the person may think you look different especially if there are angled or filtered pictures.

False expectations are also formed when there is deception. This can come from both the pictures and text on the profile. There are people that create fake accounts and use someone else's information as their own. On an episode of Catifsh, there was a person who used information from several different people, to make it harder for people to figure out the deception. Usually in these cases the person will include some of  their own information, a phone number or email address.

There are a few common deceptions that people will use to make them seem more appealing. People mostly lie about age, appearance, height, and weight. I have noticed people who have a physical insecurity mostly post photos with just their face, or maybe at an angle to get their "good side". The ones with confidence post full body pictures or pictures showing them doing something silly such as making a face or wearing a weird outfit. The fake profiles tend to have very nice, crisp photos. They look professionally done and very planned.