Cyberstalked

You’ve met some­one who shares all your impor­tant inter­ests online. You might even think you’re in love with this per­son. You’ve decided to meet in real life. That’s great. In fact, I’ve met lots of acquain­tances offline after know­ing them online for a while, and the vast major­ity of my expe­ri­ences with offline meet­ings have been pos­i­tive, or at the worst neu­tral. I have, how­ever, been very cau­tious about who I met, where the meet­ing occurred, and how much infor­ma­tion I pro­vided to a new acquaintance.

There are a few rec­om­men­da­tions I’d like to share with you. Some of these are rules which I’ve always fol­lowed. Some are lessons learned through per­sonal expe­ri­ence (hind­sight is still 20/20, even in the year 2001). Some are things I wish other peo­ple I’ve known had done dif­fer­ently that might have helped them avoid some very bad expe­ri­ences. The effec­tive­ness of these mea­sures does, how­ever, rely in part on you being care­ful about how much infor­ma­tion you’ve given out to peo­ple before you meet them offline—think about that. Seriously.

When you meet this mar­velous indi­vid­ual offline, do it in a pub­lic place—very pub­lic. It’s best if you don’t meet him or her alone—arrange a group activ­ity of some sort. Don’t go with the per­son to a pri­vate place, either—not until you’ve known him or her offline for some time. Pri­vate vehi­cles are pri­vate places for this purpose—don’t get into this person’s vehi­cle. Period.

Have a local safety con­tact. Let a trusted friend or fam­ily mem­ber know that you’re meet­ing your acquain­tance and arrange to check in with that per­son at a spe­cific time just to let him or her know that you’re okay and say how it’s going. You might want to have some pre­arranged phrase to let your safety con­tact know if there’s a prob­lem. Check in when you said you would, no mat­ter how well the meet­ing is going, because doing oth­er­wise is likely to put any respon­si­ble safety con­tact into panic mode (I know this all too well, hav­ing been the safety con­tact for some­body who just didn’t get around to call­ing me as arranged). Give the con­tact some infor­ma­tion about who you’re meet­ing in case they need to find you for any reason.

Per­son­ally, I wouldn’t agree to an indi­vid­ual meet­ing with a per­son who wasn’t an estab­lished mem­ber of a social group in which I par­tic­i­pate and came with good ref­er­ences from oth­ers who had met him or her.

I think it’s a bad idea to go meet some­one on his or her home turf. Obvi­ously, if you’re start­ing a long-distance rela­tion­ship some­one will at some point have to travel some­where for you and your sweetie to meet in per­son—but I’m not wild about LDRs, either. I know of too many peo­ple who have hared off to a dis­tant loca­tion, felt uncom­fort­able upon arriv­ing, and gone ahead with the visit because a) they couldn’t afford to go stay at a hotel if they planned to stay with their acquain­tance, or couldn’t afford to get an ear­lier flight home; and/or b) they were less “in con­trol” and assertive sim­ply because it was the other person’s ter­ri­tory. Most of those meet­ings turned bad, some very, very bad—some even dan­ger­ous or harmful.

Whether you’re close to home or trav­el­ling to see this per­son, do not allow your­self to be depen­dent on this per­son in any way. If you can­not fund your trip com­fort­ably, you have no busi­ness going. You must have enough money to feed your­self, obtain decent shel­ter, and get back home safely.

If you feel absolutely any doubt or uncer­tainty, don’t agree to the meet­ing, or can­cel it. I don’t care how last-minute it is, or how rude it seems—you have instincts for a rea­son. Use them. Yes, that’s com­mon sense, but it’s all too com­mon for peo­ple not to use com­mon sense!

Orig­i­nally pub­lished Decem­ber 12, 2000