sham connection. Most commonly operating
on social media and dating apps like Tinder, catfishers make up life stories and job histories and
pirate others’ photos to perpetuate the charade.
Their motives range from boredom, loneliness,
curiosity and revenge. The phenomenon has
spawned a television show (MTV’s Catfish) and
been referenced in episodes of series like Law
& Order: SVU. About a dozen states, including
California, now have laws that address catfishing and give victims legal recourse to seek
monetary damages.
You can reduce your chances of being catfished by watching for red flags like continuity
problems in someone’s story or a reluctance
to meet up, but the reality is it’s easy to lie and
misrepresent yourself online. Privacy is at risk,
too, since most of us readily upload information
about our lives to the cloud — likes, interests,
videos, photos of ourselves clothed or nude.
Apps like Snapchat, while inherently ephemeral since exchanges aren’t stored, don’t stop
people from screenshotting pictures or texts.
As a result, the lure of social-media theft has
never been higher. The service Ashley Madison,
marketed to people who are already married or
in relationships, capitalized on the infidelity
urge and the internet’s ability to fulfill it (“Life
is short. Have an affair”) until it was infamously
hacked (and all user data released) in 2015.
Chat features on everything from Instagram
and Twitter to the seemingly innocuous Words
With Friends are prime locations for sparking
up new relationships; in fact, there’s a term for it
— sliding into DMs (direct messages). A 2017 Men’s
Fitness story explains “how to slide into her DMs,”
calling them “an undisputed fire-starter of the
digital age.” In the 2016 song “Down in the DM,”
Memphis rapper Yo Gotti details an addiction to
Instagram and requesting nude photos on the app;
the song has had over 115 million plays on Spotify.
Along with this new digital landscape has
come a rise in partner anxiety, distrust, and
cottage industries that track our significant
others’ actions online. Some people use revenge
porn — sharing sexually explicit photos and
videos without the other person’s consent — to
blackmail or coerce a current or former lover or
punish one who’s broken things off. The practice
is outlawed in countries like Israel, Germany, the
United Kingdom and the majority of the United
States. Capturing compromising images can be
as simple as taking screenshots or as involved
as using keylogging spy apps; a quick Google
search yields numerous hits for software that
can access deleted data off a monitored device in
addition to phone logs, social media activity and
location history, all for a nominal fee.
Prior to Facebook, sites like MySpace and
chat rooms made it easy to meet strangers
online — just look at Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks
in an “over-30s” chat room in You’ve Got Mail.
With the demise of these forums, many people
have taken to dating apps not for dating, but for
just talking — face-to-face is ideal, but digital is
more convenient. A survey by Abodo of 3,500
college students published on Mashable found
that only 4 percent preferred to meet people
through dating apps, while 80 percent still liked
to meet via mutual friends or shared interests.
Even 34 percent of those on Tinder said it was
mostly for entertainment, also the top motivation of Bumble and Grindr users.
To provide this more generalized connection, some matchmaking apps are branching
beyond dating. Bumble now features offshoots
Bumble Bizz, for finding mentors, networking
and career opportunities, and BumbleBFF,
geared solely to making friends. Tinder has
launched Vina, also for finding friends. The
internet has become our public space, the new
town square — it’s up to us to figure out the best
way to use it. m
Statistics
suggest that
about one
in five
relationships
currently begin
online, but
it’s estimated
that by 2040
that number
will jump to
70 percent.