Dating and hookup apps can facilitate joyous connections. They also can have a rather dark underbelly. Expect a minefield complete with the occasional unconscious, wounded soul completely misrepresenting themself. To combat this, I strongly suggest pretending your app is a video game populated by "avatars" (thumbnails).
Some of these avatars represent honest, lovely human beings, some represent selfish, unethical hungry ghosts. For sanity sake, believe absolutely nothing/no one when you start playing. After all, apps are fantastical worlds of smoke and mirrors just like video games.
If you like someone’s avatar and they like yours, great! If you are enjoying your chat, even better! But always remember NOTHING is real...yet.
Trust must be accrued.
If you are an old-school romantic and enjoy courtship via words, by all means take the slow train. BUT, again, treat it with all the seriousness of a video game and keep reminding yourself that everything is illusion. EVERYTHING. Check in with your body. If you are enjoying the game in the moment, great. No harm done. Enjoy the witty banter, but know that to harbor strong attachments to your mystery person at this stage is almost always a big mistake. Spending hours and days texting to forge a real-world connection is an even bigger mistake.
Here's the key: immediately after you have established a rapport, suggest connecting via voice, cam or in-person. If your new avatar friend resists escalating the connection this way, it's a big red flag. If something smells fishy, IT IS. Unless they suffer from social anxiety and require a slower escalation, this almost always means it's time to cut bait and move on. You are being played.
And remember, some people send 10 year old pics before the meth habit took hold and, of course, some users simply catfish. (Catfishing is when a person uses another person’s sexy pics instead of their own.) The only way to truly guarantee that someone is physically who they say they are is by camming or meeting in person.
IMPORTANT FOR NEW USERS: If someone is a no-show for your first planned meet-up, and you have foolishly skipped the camming stage, you have most likely been hustled. Block the user immediately and keep honing your app skills.
RECOMMENDATION: Remember, in our Appville game, nothing is real until you meet your pixelated hottie via cam or, ideally, in person. By all means, enjoy the fantasy, enjoy the game, but experience shows, it’s often a crushing waste of time tapping out notes of seduction only to find out your new heartthrob resembles a photo on a post office wall. So, escalate quickly. Inspect the merchandise, sniff the pheromones (if you can), and gage physical and energetic attraction before spending another second projecting your fantasies onto a stranger.