And That's Why You're Single

Is It Ever OK To Lie In Your Dating Profile? #atwys

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 08:08 AM PDT

The topic of transparency and online dating came up over at The Frisky yesterday, and it stirred an interesting debate. orly_dr_evil

As I’ve said before, deception is an integral part of online dating whether we like it or not. It can be as innocent as fudging your age to as nefarious as scamming someone out of thousands of dollars. The levels of deception vary, but the exist, and it’s time that people just start excepting that instead of clutching their pearls.

The main focus of the article was whether or not someone should photoshop their photos. As someone with slightly photoshopped photos on her profile, I don’t see a problem with it.

meshoot4

This is one of my photos. In it, my face has been enhanced a bit to make the features more clear. The original and untouched photo is below:

Now, to me. There isn’t much difference. I’m sure that somebody will manage to find something to pick at, but to me they look pretty much the same.

Here’s another one I use on my profile:

winetopnobra

Now, here’s the untouched original:

Blow this sucker up and you’ll see the lines under my eyes. Oh, and you’ll see that my bra was showing. Do I really look that different? No. Since these were taken at the height of everything going on with my family and just a few weeks before my sister died, I knew that the bags under my eyes were due to stress and could be fixed with rest and aggressive skin care treatments (creams, foundation, not surgery). Therefore I really didn’t feel I was being too misleading by posting the retouched version. P.S. I eagerly await the running commentary from the peanut gallery offering sage advice about how to treat under eye lines and bags.

Now, do I think people should post egregiously misleading photos? No, I don’t. Of course not. But, boo hoo, I might show up on a date and have wrinkles under my eyes. You poor dears, I hope you’ll be able to muster through that date.

Anyhoo, in the comments of the article, I attempted to use some critical analysis to one particularly overused dating trope and it did not go over well. (For those of you who aren’t as literarrrayish and wicked smaht writery writers like me, a trope is an overused and often cliched theme or plot device.) One of the writers for the site weighed in in the comments saying that if someone lies about their height or age or posts photo shopped photos, then it should be considered what other, more sinister, things they’re hiding. I then asked her whether or not her new husband that she met online had revealed in his profile that he was here on a visa that was about to expire. They had recently married, and she admitted that the fact that his visa was about to expire was one of the reasons they decided to marry so soon after meeting. I have a hard time believing that he did mention it, because who wants to meet up with someone who might be leaving?? (Other than people just looking for something casual, which is totally acceptable.) Of course, nobody over there agreed with my reasoning. While the writer didn’t answer me, many of the commenters chimed in saying that not revealing your citizenship or employment status in your profile/before you meet isn’t the same as lying about your age or height or posting photo shopped photos. “How would someone even go about addressing that?” one person asked. The same way we expect people who are not actually single but rather separated do. They simply explain the situation. Of course, if someone actually did leave out the fact they weren’t officially divorced, there would be an uproar. Citizenship or employment status? Eh, whatevs. That logic makes no sense. And we all know I am all about the making of the sense.

Now, I don’t know about any of you, but if I show up to a date and learn that the guy who said in his profile that he lives in New York City actually lives in Stamford, CT, I’m going to be mildly annoyed. But here’s the kicker: if I find him attractive and we get on, I’ll probably overlook that misleading bit of information. Forget about it if he doesn’t actually live in the US and is possibly going to be leaving for several months if not permanently very soon. Not revealing that bit of information in some way before you meet someone, to me, is deceptive. Same goes for employment status. If a guy checks off Executive/Management as his occupation but reveals on the first date that he’s actually unemployed and never mentioned that fact in his profile, I’m not going to be thrilled. But if I like him, I’m probably going to get past it. But just to be clear..that’s still a form of deception.

In any case, my point of the debate was that I believe statements like, “If they lie about X, then they’ll do Y” are poorly constructed arguments often used to justify being shallow or too picky. Yo9u can’t arbitrarily decide that not being upfront about one thing is different than not being upfront about something else equally as important. And, let’s face it, where someone lives and whether or not they have a job or are separated or have kids are important.

Bottom line? If you like ‘em, you’re not going to care. If you aren’t attracted to them, they’re just lying liars who lie and waste your pretty/handsome. That’s why all this ballyhooing about honesty and online dating is a waste of energy. There’s lying and then there is lying. Fudging the truth and omitting certain bits of information, in my opinion, are acceptable so long as you come clean once you meet. Someone who decides you’re insecure or being maliciously deceptive because you shaved a few years off your age or added two inches to your height probably just isn’t attracted to you or has superficial reasons why the lie is unacceptable. That’s my two cents on the matter.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2014