YOU HAD
ME @ LOL
change of increasingly intimate
bits of digital information. First,
Hank and Zitsman swapped email
addresses — though not to their
primary accounts. Next came cellphone numbers, and, finally, Facebook friend requests.
As Hank’s experience illustrates, Facebook profiles — the
virtual ID cards of the internet
that tie offline identities to online
ones — have given social dating a
boost by making it more feasible
to vet strangers online. With its
emphasis on real names and real-
“SOCIAL MEDIA
SITES DO A
BETTER JOB OF
APPROXIMATING
THE NATURAL
HUMAN
EXPERIENCE THAN
DATING SITES.”
HUFFINGTON
10.14.12
world friendships, Facebook has
reduced anonymity online and
created virtual “IDs” that people
can use to scope out an attractive
Yelper or Instagrammer before
ever meeting face-to-face.
Sure it’s easy enough to fake
a Facebook profile, or remove
“chainsaws” from one’s list of
interests, but the social network
has nonetheless been used as an
imperfect-but-important safeguard against nefarious Lotharios.
A 2012 report from the Pew Research Center found Facebook users actually exhibit “higher levels
of social trust.”
“People give out their email
addresses because it feels safer
than giving out your Facebook
profile, which has your real name
and whole identity,” says Hank.
She notes she first “wanted to be
friends” with Zitsman “to see his
pictures, and make sure he didn’t
seem like a crazy person, or that it
wasn’t an account made yesterday
by a fifty year-old murderer who
was going to kidnap me.”
A Sea Of “Wingmen”
The different rules of decorum
that exist for different social
media services make some more
conducive to social dating than