Digital Dating

Being a gay woman navigating the new age of dating has been far from linear. Yes, that was a non-straight joke. I’ve experienced all the gay stereotypes: falling for the straight girl, married women asking me to be their “third”, dating longdistance, and the hardest one of all, falling in love with my best friend.

Whether you are gay, straight or anything in between, modern-day dating is a wild ride. From ghosting, an overflow of apps, and anxiety-filled interactions, it’s a rough time to be single.

I attempted virtual dating in the midst of a global pandemic. We tried virtual movie nights, virtual workouts, and finding recipes to cook together over Zoom. Romantic, I know. We did our best to make it work. This inspired creative ways to share our love languages from afar, but it became harder to feel connected. The distance and virtual fatigue got to us both.

Online dating brought us together, but at the end of the day we are human. Our physiology needs in-person connections.

As our generation learns to break from traditional beliefs, less of us seek marriage, kids, monogamy and other nuclear ideologies. We now prioritize ourselves and our mental health while shaping a new culture of relationships.

As the editorial team discussed this issue’s cover, we tried to break down how we could visually convey the feelings of dating under the current social conditions.

You may be asking yourself, “What’s with the eggplant on the cover?” Believe me, this was one of the strangest photoshoots I have ever done.

Those who have experienced the world of online dating know that if someone is not offering their heart, it’s just about sex or money. As a woman, this was a consistent theme while virtually dating. I’ve seen people meet their soulmates online, but sometimes it takes filtering through the unsolicited eggplants before meeting prince or princess charming.

This issue takes a deep dive into the world of modern dating. We hope you find something to relate to as you flip through the pages of dating in this virtually-driven life.

Kaitlyn Lavo

Shannon Carter Editor-in-Chief

Carolyn Burt Managing Editor

Michaella Huck Print Editor

Mercedes Cannon-Tran Print Managing Editor

Angel Peña Lead Designer

Maia Aslaksen Michael Goldsmith Ian McKay Copy Editors

Grace Da Rocha Culture Editor

William Argueta Illustrator

Marissa Roberts News Editor

Trevor Morgan Online Editor

Kaitlyn Lavo

Photo Editor

Jordan Puente

Sports Editor

Troy Barnes Ivy Jenkins Bryan Hernandez Staff

Arvli Ward Publisher

Jody Holcomb General Manager

Sandra Tan Business Manager

Published by the Department of Journalism, California State University Northridge Manzanita Hall 140 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330-8258

Editorial hello@sundial.csun.edu • (818) 677-2915

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Because of high production costs, members of the CSUN community are permitted one copy per issue. Where available, additional copies may be purchased with prior approval for 50 cents each by contacting the Daily Sundial. Newspaper theft is a crime. Those who violate the single copy rule may be subject to civil and criminal prosecution and/or subject to university discipline.

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Photo Illustration: “Cat Fishing” by Kaitlyn Lavo. The online world is a scary place, as it’s easy for people to say they are a totally di erent person than who they are in real life. Modeled by Jordan Haddad and Daniel Jabriel Hernandez.

Digital Dating:

Dangers of online dating and how to combat them

When Rebecca Singleton was a CSUN student a few years ago, she would browse dating apps like many her age would and went on a few dates.

On one of those dates, she thought that she was going to be murdered.

She was picked up by a man she had met on OkCupid one night. The pair drove to a park, where the man attempted to get her to kiss him. She repeatedly turned down his advances and thought she had fended him off.

Her gut was telling her something was really wrong.

Then the man told her he had something to show her in his trunk. They got out of the car and walked to the back. When the trunk popped open, she saw something that set off every alarm bell in her head.

It was a shotgun.

“Thank god the park was close to my house and I just told him I had to go home and blocked that psycho on everything,” Singleton said. “But it still gives me a lot of anxiety that he knows my name and had my phone number.”

The fear of a first date turning dangerous exists somewhere in the back of many people’s minds, but Singleton’s experience is just one representation of when that fear becomes a reality.

The dating landscape has shifted dramatically towards online dating and away from traditional methods in recent years. Dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Grindr have become the number one way that singles meet each other, according to a 2019 research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Data from Business of Apps also shows that over 300 million people worldwide use a dating app, roughly 4% of the world’s population.

“The activity level has gotten to the point where if you’re not online and don’t have an online dating strategy, you’re probably going to stay single,” said Julie Spira, the founder of Cyber-Dating Expert.

With millions of people on dating apps, thoughts about their safety might not be the first thing present in millions of minds. But some serious crimes relating to dating apps have occurred.

Meetups from dating apps have been directly linked to serious crimes like murder and sexual assault.

Quantifying the amount of violent crime that can be linked directly with dating apps is difficult, but a 2015 estimate from True Crime Daily placed the numbers at more than 16,000 abductions, 100 murders and thousands of rapes each year across America.

In 2016, 35-year-old Preston Talley was murdered in Florida by two men after he was lured into the woods by someone he met on the dating app Plenty of Fish. A 2019 ProPublica story detailed a woman in Massachusetts who was sexually assaulted by a three-time convicted rapist and designated sex offender, who she had met on Plenty of Fish and gone on a few dates with.

Dating apps have also created opportunities for criminals to target victims for scams and blackmail. Romance scams in which a fraudster solicits money from someone they’ve wooed online have proliferated and resulted in $1 billion in losses in 2021, according to an FBI press release.

Blackmail has also become a huge issue on dating apps, and is something that can particularly affect the LGBTQ community.

In the U.K., a man was sentenced to five years in prison for threatening to expose men he hooked up with on Grindr as gay to their loved ones if the victims didn’t pay him after their encounter.

Concerns for privacy have also been an issue with dating apps because of how they collect data like location and personal information.

The amount of data some dating apps collect is shocking.