in

What Should You Do If You Meet Someone Online, Show Up To A Date With Them, And They Look Nothing Like Their Photos?

Yakobchuk Olena - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purpose only, not the actual person

This question is really asking: “What do you do if you meet someone online and show up to a date to find out you’ve been catfished?”

It’s a complicated answer. First, let’s go over what catfishing is for those who have been fortunate enough not to know what this phenomenon is.

Online dating is already difficult to navigate. Catfishers are just one more thing that sucks about meeting people online.

Catfishing is setting up a fake profile, disguising who you really are for romance, or scamming unsuspecting victims. Catfishing has multiple forms, so if you’re lucky, you’ll only have to deal with the mildest form of catfishing – someone disguising their looks to get a date with you.

The catfisher could be doing this for many reasons: low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, disorganized attachment style, and narcissism.

Whatever their reason, they intentionally hide their true appearance to increase the odds of getting a date.

Hopefully, that is their whole plan. More extreme versions of catfishing involve lying about gender, age, and lifestyle to scam victims somehow.

If you are lucky, maybe the guy/gal you are meeting up with just hid their appearance a little. Some common ways to catfish people by appearance include: using filters, using a fake profile picture, using a profile picture with multiple faces (so you don’t know which person is the person you are talking to), and only using professional photos in their profile.

How Do You Stop A Catfish BEFORE You Get To The Date?

Yakobchuk Olena – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person

Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox.

1 of 4