Dating in the Age of the Sext

In the early days, there was AIM. AIM could be used as a way to connect to your friends after school, but it could also be a place to meet strangers in random chatrooms. This quality in particular served as the catalyst for many, many terrible after school specials about meeting strangers online. There were real dangers with these chatrooms, but there also were relationships that were fostered, both platonic and romantic.

AIM has of course fallen out of style (and possibly existence?), but newer forms of the same concept exist in some shape or form. Recent studies seems to indicate that some 50% have dated someone they meet online, maybe a third of which end in marriage. And the numbers seem to be growing. Online dating websites such as eHarmony, OkCupid, and PlentyofFish have thousands of members. Apps like Tinder and Grindr serve as popular methods to connect to someone as easily as a swipe to the right.

For some people, this new way of 'meeting' without actually meeting face-to-face is seen as something of a positive. I have many friends who use Tinder because meeting guys at a bar is sort of problematic. Guys at bars can be troublesome, or, in some cases, actually threatening. For these girls, it's much easier to meet a guy through Tinder, get to know him, and then actually meet at a time when they feel comfortable.

But sometime, it isn't better. Sometimes it's actually worse. It's become increasingly noticeable that some guys, prominently straight men, but not exclusively, mostly use apps like Tinder as a method to sexually harass people. This odd phenomenon seems to be so common, that it has spawned numerous sites dedicated to cataloging these creepy, albeit funny, messages.

For some odd reason, there seems to be a method. Start out a conversation normally, then bring in a ludicrous, offensive, and rude comment. This comment is sometimes accompanied by an 'lol' as if this addition would make the text less...serious? easier to explain as a joke? the logic eludes me. In Lippman and Campbell's study examining the nature of sexting amongst adolescents, they found that girls must often face the constricting binary of either being labeled a slut or a prude for or for not exchanging sexts with boys (2014). A similar effect seems to have carried over to the internet dating world as we see repeat examples of something like this: 

Reference:
Lippman, J. & Campbell, S. (2014). "Damned if you do, damned if you don't...if you're a girl: Relational and normative contexts of adolescent sexting in the United States. Journal of Children and Media, 8(4), 371-385.