Page 46 of The App Trap
So, who should turn up today? Bad Steve! It seemed that I had been texting Bad Steve all along by mistake because I made the rookie error of not distinguishing who was who with a simple app abbreviation-job title combo tagged on to his contact details.
I was so confused by the appearance of Bad Steve that I thought it was by mere coincidence that he'd turned up. Why the hell would he want to come out on a second date, anyway? Then, to make things worse––about two minutes later, New, potentially alright Steve walked in. It turned out that I’d somehow been texting them both, thinking that I’dbeen texting one person, and had arranged the same date with both of them. I’d actually saved both their numbers within the same contact in my phone. What an absolute goon.
I immediately jumped up and told Bad Steve, “I’m really sorry, but I’ve just been texted by my dry cleaner and he says I have to pick up my trousers right now because there’s a problem.”
Those were my exact words. I don’t know where the hell they came from.
I managed to slip out unharmed and unseen by New/Possibly Good Steve, and waited for him to text me, enquiring where on Earth I was. I then played dumb and pretended that I’d got the wrong day. The whole thing was so stressful, I didn’t even bother to reschedule.
Wednesday
An awful day. I’d been dating ‘professionally’ now for a while, and as far as stalkers went, I had completely lucked out.
Online dating was a strange beast. You could build up weird little sexually charged relationships with people in cyberspace without ever even meeting them. It just so happened that over the last few months, I had been doing this very thing with a couple of people. One of those people was called Freddy, a tall, rainbow-haired, edgy looking, punky type of guy. We were conducting a ‘no-holds-barred’ type of text affair. I had been chatting to him via the medium of one of Ben’s darker dating sites, and this man had some absolutely nutty ideas about what good sex was. Nutty, but kind of intriguing.
Anyway, it turns out that Freddy was a bit of a stalker, as I was about to find out. Stalkers come in all shapes, sizes and threat levels:
Greenlevel
These ones were pretty much no threat at all. The Green level stalker was just somebody that kept sending you messages over and over again. They didn’t have access to any of your personal information and seemed like the sort of people that wouldn’t be capable of finding it. Better still, they probably couldn't be bothered. These people can be combatted simply by blocking them on the dating app. One flush and they were gone.
However, they were likely to be serial-daters, so it was anticipated that they’d be registered on multiple apps. If they spotted you on another dating site, they would quite literally have been in like Flynn (whoever Flynn is). Also, they may have had a different profile picture on each website, so watch out for that. Be careful of inadvertently initiating contact with them by mistake, then unintentionally making them think that you’re now attracted to them. Green level stalkers generally kept emailing you until they at least get a‘Fuck off’. Even then, some of them kept coming and coming, which was what our good friend the ‘block’ button was invented for.
Amber level
This lot were generally people that may live or hang around in the same area as you. Usually, on a dating app, it gave you the option to disclose the general area where you lived. You can be as specific as you like, though withlocation-based apps, you didn't have an option to be quite as stingy with such personal information.
Sometimes you’d find yourself in contact with local folks from your area––especially the lazy ones. Some may also inform you that they were going to be looking out for you in the street every day from now on.
I’d also been told that Ihadbeen seen in the street, and let me tell you this, they’d been spot on to the finest detail, which had since made me reasonably paranoid. I remember receiving a message from somebody on a Saturday afternoon whilst I was sitting in my favourite coffee shop somewhere in Europe.
I was routinely checking my matches, which were refreshed pretty much on the minute––every minute, when I got a message saying,‘Loving the checked shirt!!!’, with a winky-face emoji bolted on the end of it: The creepiest emoji that an unsolicited potential love interest could type. I looked around and clocked every male face within a radius of ten metres. It was a mixture of terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. He wasn’t bad looking, and didn’t seem very threatening from what I could tell from his profile. I think the thing that alarmed me most, though, was his taste in men's shirts. It was my least favourite shirt of the time. In fact, it was my ‘Monday shirt’. Of course, it could have been meant as a sarcastic remark. There were a few exclamation marks added after the compliment, come to think of it. Usually, more than one exclamation mark indicated that someone was taking the piss.
The weird thing was that I never heard a whisper from him again after that. Obviously, it battered my ego a tad, because I thought that he’d seen me, not been impressed and scooted off into cyber oblivion in a massive hurry. If only I was wearing a different shirt, I could have beenmarried to that maniac by now. Or chained up in his basement.
Red Level
Red level was a different matter entirely. Sometimes, these people were difficult to spot, so here were some of the things to look out for:
1.They will text you consistently and frequently every day––starting from the very early bit of the morning after the night before.
2.They will plan the next 45 dates in terrifying detail.
3.They may ‘accidentally’ even tell you that they love you in the heat of your first passionate sex session (or dispassionate sex session, which is even more worrying).
4.They will invent multiple pet names for you even before the first date.
5.They may suggest you change your deodorant or after-shave to a fragrance they prefer.
6.They will friend request you on Facebook immediately.
7.Their Facebook friends are in single figures. Always a worry.
8.They keep popping up on a dating app as someone who has ‘viewed your profile’ every day.
9.They check in with you more than ten times a day. Nine is acceptable.
10.They know where you work before you’ve told them.
