If you’ve been reading my work on Medium for a bit, you may remember I used to write under a pen name. I didn’t want anyone who knew my full name to find my Medium profile. Especially my dates, because you know, sometimes I write about my dating experiences.
Recently, I decided to write under my full name, so of course, what I feared would happen happened almost immediately.
We had matched on Bumble. He seemed like a nice guy, so when he suggested we exchange numbers, I agreed. We texted back and forth for a couple of weeks and arranged plans for our first date. At the moment, I’m wary of disclosing the location so I’ll just say it was an outdoor event.
I saw him waiting for me and approached him. I was a little nervous, but cheerful. I had been looking forward to the date since we had planned it. We decided to walk around and check out what our food options were at the event.
Almost immediately, he send something that sent to evening into a tailspin.
“So, I looked you up online…”
“Oh..?” I asked.
A pit formed in my stomach.
“Yeah, you had said you were a writer, so I looked up your phone number and found your Medium account…”
It felt like someone had thrown ice-cold water on me. The two worlds I keep separate — my writing world and my real world — were suddenly one.
This man had asked for my phone number and subsequently used it to figure out my last name. Then he searched online and found my Medium profile.
The pit in my stomach grew. I thought maybe it was just first-date nerves, but deep down I knew I wasn’t comfortable with where this conversation was going.
As we were walking, he mentioned wanting to lose some weight.
I bit my tongue, wondering what the chances were that he hadn’t seen or read one of my stories about my weight loss journey.
After a moment, I said, “I’ve lost some weight… but you probably already knew that, right?”
He did already know that. He said he was impressed.
My weight loss is something very personal to me. It’s not something I like to share outside of Medium unless I’ve known you for a bit. It definitely wouldn’t come up on a first date. The choice was gone, and the frustration I felt with this disparity of information continued to compound. The pit in my stomach persisted.
I wondered— when did he read my stories? When I told him that I write? The day of our date? Somewhere in between? And why did he wait till we met to tell me this?
I’m not a confrontational person. I love writing; it’s a skill I use to express myself and find a community online, but in real life, I am somewhat timid and introverted.
He talked about other things as we continued walking, but I couldn’t shake this discomfort from the forefront of my mind.
Eventually, I asked myself,
Why am I staying in a situation that makes me uncomfortable?
He didn’t seem to notice my inner turmoil.
Agitated by his obliviousness, I asked, “So what else do you already know about me?”
- He had read “Straight Men, Here Are 5 Things to Remove From Your Dating Profile” — and apologized for bringing up pineapple as a pizza topping when we first started messaging. (He told me he had reread our messages before our date.)
- He had read “Today a Police Officer Assumed I Didn’t Speak English” — He told me he couldn’t relate. I didn’t ask him to.
He told me that that was all he could read because he’s not a Medium member. I couldn’t help but laugh.
It wasn’t funny but I was laughing at this outdoor event next to this man who was clearly confused by my laughter.
After a moment, I told him that the way he looked me up and read my stories made me uncomfortable. He told me his last match had looked him up before their date.
And he had been flattered by it.
“That you were flattered by that tells me that we are fundamentally different people,” I told him.
We just keep walking in silence for a moment.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked.
“It was nice meeting you,” I told him before walking away.
Takeaway
In the age of The Tinder Swindler, I understand people may want to do their due diligence by looking up their online dating matches.
I also understand the people that are horrified by this story. We don’t always realize how easy we are to find online.
I know now that it was naive of me to provide my first name and phone number and think that my precious Medium stories were safe from my match’s eyes.
Maybe you’re like my date, Tim. Maybe you’d be flattered too if someone did their research on you beforehand.
But for me, knowing that he made a conscious decision to read personal stories about me before we met rubbed me the wrong way. It took away from the getting-to-know each other phase and really caught me off guard.
Going forward, I will be more aware of these things.
So what do you think? Where do you fall in the balance of privacy and security? Let me know in the comments!
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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