Dana Rozier matched with a guy on Hinge and went out with him the same day at a bar in her neighborhood in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Hanging out at her apartment afterward, where she invited him inside to eat tacos, she told him that she liked his sweatshirt, which said “We’re not really strangers.” He told her that he had made it himself, although she knew it was actually the name of a popular card game that sells clothing merch. Before he left, he gave Rozier the sweatshirt. The inner tag was cut out.
Later that night, Rozier, 29, called him through Hinge to let him down gently. He seemed to understand. But two days later, a flower delivery arrived at Rozier’s apartment. “So then I see that this guy that I had just met two days prior that I only went out with once sends me a beautiful bouquet of flowers,” Rozier says. “And the card said, ‘We’re not really strangers.’ And, like, does he know how creepy that is?”
Rozier’s friends were concerned. One of them posted in a private Facebook group with 142,000 members who sleuth online to find long-lost relatives or run background checks on possibly shady figures, using one of the many sites that aggregate a hodgepodge of public records for a fee.
“So my friend is dating this new guy and I just want to make sure he doesn’t have a criminal background,” Rozier’s friend posted, along with her date’s full name, age, and location. Soon, two people reported back: According to the background check websites they used, he had two traffic violations but no criminal record.
Rozier was only “20 percent scared,” she says, but “you’re always afraid of the unknown because you never know what people are capable of.” She’s describing a familiar, vaguely disconcerting vibe many women dance around on dates: Is he normal...or weird? And is he weird in the fun way or the scary way where he just might unalive me later? |
