“Find my” online date safely

And four other dating app tips

The date was going really well. One conversation led to another and we had to stop ourselves from bringing up yet another story about our mutual friends or of Soshified, a forum dedicated to K-Pop group Girls’ Generation. When I went to the bathroom, Jin sneakily settled the bill. I thanked her for the two whisky cocktails she put on her student credit card.

Then came the most gentlewomanly offer for the night: “Let me walk you home.”

I hesitated as I put on my black leather jacket, covering myself up before stepping out to the chilly Hong Kong winter. She seemed harmless, having picked a swanky bar and offering to come to Central, a district with high foot traffic. But I’ve only known her for two hours. Prior to this afternoon, she was nothing more than a right swipe on Tinder.

It’s no longer uncommon for couples to meet via online dating apps, especially queer folk. When I first started dating girls, I found it hard to identify women who were also into women. Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Her helped solve this, though with the internet comes stranger danger. I never know who’s on the other side of the screen. As a young woman swiping through dating apps in a foreign city, I wanted to make sure I looked after myself.

Since I was raised with The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley, I came up with these precautionary guidelines for my peace of mind:

1. Meet in a public place.
   
   Sometimes my dates offer to meet at a bar near their place or even at their flat. My preference is to meet at a restaurant or coffee shop that I frequent at, just because I’m much more familiar with how to leave the venue if I need to.
   

2. Sharing my live location.

   
   I use the “Find My” feature on iOS to share my location with my roommate, but there may be similar features on other phone operating systems. I also tell them the time and location of my date so they have a reference point if anything happens.
   

3. Assign a time for my friend to call.
   
   If I don’t text my friend within an hour of the date, I ask them to call me. If the date is going well, I’ll answer the call and say there’s nothing to worry about. If the date isn’t, I can make up a dialogue and get out of an awkward situation.
   

4. Stick to texting on the app.
   
   It can be tempting to switch over to WhatsApp or text to coordinate meeting up for the date, but I don’t share my number until after the first date. Dating apps have a texting feature, after all. It’s easier to block someone on a dating app rather than having my personal number in the wrong hands.
   

5. Be wary of sharing personal information.
   
   This includes my office address, my home address, and other information that could put me at risk. I always imagine this other person to be a potential Joe Goldberg¹, the worst case scenario. I become extremely cautious in sharing personal details during the first meeting.

Jin was still waiting for an answer. Could she walk me home?

In actuality, I had walked over to this bar, but I didn’t want her to know that I lived nearby. I said she can walk me to the train station, but she insisted on hopping on with me and walking me from there. Her chivalry met my caution.

We tapped our Octopus cards into the station and hopped on the train. The Hong Kong population is dense enough to fill a train every three minutes, so I thought giving away my nearest station wasn’t too much of a risk. When we arrived a mere two stops later, I said this is as far as her “walking me home” would go. She protested, wanting to be polite and walk me home, but I didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t even let her see which side of the station I exit from, thinking that would be too much information. 

She is, at the end of this fateful day, a stranger I met from the internet.

Thank you to my online friends who safely went through this piece:

Lucia Agnelli

,

Dominik Gmeiner

,

Harrison Moore

,

Wyndo

, and

Kelly Davis

.

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Looking back: Frederick Terman, a Stanford dean of the school of engineering, encouraged his students to settle, and start companies instead of leaving for elsewhere after graduation. In 1937, David Packard and William Hewlett were the first to heed this, creating Hewlett-Packard in a garage, which is commonly considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley. — Source: Small Spaces via

Simon Sarris

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Update log:

• 📖 Reading Joan Nestle’s A Fragile Union (42% completed).

• 🎤 Will be speaking at two Pride-related panels this week. Tis the season for the token lesbian Asian to be booked and busy. I’m writing a piece on this soon…

• 🏙️ Took my friend who yolo visited from New York around Hong Kong. Though the weather is dreary (meaning not camera-worthy for me), it’s still so fun to see what she stops to take a photo of.

• 🥥 We had the best cocktails in town: cold brew coffee infused vodka with hot coconut foam.

• 🎨 Painted six business card-sized sketches as homework for a watercolour class I’m taking. I was surprised at how well I’m interpreting values now. Practice does work.

• 🎮 Jin surprised me with Paper Mario RPG on the Switch. I had really loved the Paper Mario: The Origami King one from 2020. I’m so excited to play it this weekend.

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1.  The protagonist from You.