Bad Boyfriend vs. Dating On Facebook

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Back when I was a high school student in Mexico City --this was over ten years ago, for those of you wondering --having Internet access at home was considered a status symbol. It was expensive and not readily available in many areas, which meant that meeting a girl in a chat room --remember those? --was the ultimate prize for most guys my age. The logic was:

The girl can afford a computer < can afford Internet access < is probably rich < is probably hot because rich men marry good-looking women and usually have good-looking daughters.

Most people who trolled chat rooms didn't have pictures of themselves --scanners were rare, and digital cameras were even harder to come across --so all one could do was to hope for the best when the inevitable first (and blind) date happened. Thankfully, our twisted logic was right in several cases, and one just needed to say "I met the girl online" when describing a weekend fling to elicit approving nods from other males in the group.

Now, everyone has Internet access, and most of us have a large chunk of our lives plastered across the web. Forget about having a picture or not: we have dozens of albums on whatever social network we're using this year, dedicated to everything from our drunken green-tinted St. Patrick's Day rampages to what our grandmothers made for us for Christmas. It's not uncommon for people to fall in love online --one out of five relationships in the USA start like this --and it's very likely for people to want to be Facebook friends with someone they started dating, possibly even before the first date occurs. In fact, you could say that becoming someone's friend on Facebook counts as a de facto first date: you get to find out what they like, what they look like on their best days, what their relationship with their parents is... Hey, if you're lucky, you'll find pictures of the chick in her underwear, which would be the 21st century way of getting to first base.

My advice: don't do it.

I have a cardinal rule when it comes to relationships (of any kind, not only romantic) that happen online: I don't let them cross over to the real world. Talking with someone online usually carries a flirtatious and seemingly  innocent connotation that will only turn awkward when meeting in real life. I've had too many bad experiences to count here, but now my decision is final: if I met you online, I won't meet you in person. Not even if you're really hot. Especially if you're really hot, actually. Furthermore, when I start dating someone, I try to avoid becoming Facebook friends or following each other on Twitter for as long as I can pull it off.

Women --particularly young women, the kind I like --value their online activities way too much these days. My latest ex-girlfriend and I would have minor arguments about what I was and wasn't allowed to post on her wall or whether I could retweet something she said or not. Can you imagine saying something like this ten years ago? Ironically (or not, considering we met on Twitter) her online activities (and sometimes lack thereof) where what made me suspect (and, later, confirm) our relationship was in trouble. More on that in a second.

I've put together a few rules for you to handle your woman when it comes to online interactions. Like I said, you should pretend you don't have a Facebook account at all --when first meeting the girl, look her up and then block her ass --but if you're busted or you still want to add her to see what she is up to, take my advice.

1. Girls always have something to hide, especially attractive girls. (And I'd like to think that my students only talk to attractive women; ugly chicks only exist for extreme cases when we need something.) If she is hiding something, avoid any sort of serious attempt to have a relationship with her. The two most common things that women will hide are their tagged pictures and their relationship status. If one is missing, bump her to the "booty call" section of your mental black book; if both are, she should immediately be demoted to "shady whore" right away.

Remember the ex I mentioned? Once, right before we broke up, she went to a party with her friends one weekend, but not a single tagged picture of it appeared online. This made me suspicious. Girls love taking pictures and the first thing they always do when they come home from a night out is to upload them. Mysteriously, neither she nor any of her friends did so. The fact that she clearly asked her friends not to tag her in anything so I wouldn't know what she did was precisely what made me think that she did something. The same applies when you see her number of friends go up but you don't see any of her new "friendships" on her wall. She's hiding something. Women are always hiding something.

2. Does she get a lot of comments from dudes? More important: does she delete comments from dudes? Hot chicks will want their stock to remain high among males in case they need a favor or just some good old attention; and trust me: women always need a favor or some good old attention. If she deletes something you said, it means two things: she sees you as a potential sexual partner --if you were just a buddy, she wouldn't care about what you said --and she also doesn't want other people to know she sees you as a potential sexual partner. And by "other people" I mean "the other dudes she's banging" and "her stupid, gossiping girlfriends".

3. What does her profile picture say? If she's alone in all, there's a good chance she's extremely full of herself. High maintenance = not good. If she's with her friends, on the other hand, she may not be the hottest one in the group. (This is particularly important to remember when you are going through her profile before the first date.) The perfect balance is when a girl looks good on her profile picture but it doesn't look like a headshot. Is it a candid picture where she looks good, or is she clearly mugging for the camera?

4. If you're talking on Facebook Chat, she should be the last one to say something. This should be obvious to anyone who knows the basics of talking to any woman. Don't be a dick, but don't sound too interested either. If she doesn't make the first move --a lot of girls will just stare at the chat menu, hoping to be approached first --you should always pretend you just realized she was online (without apologizing for it). Another great tactic is to just start talking to a girl without greeting her, as if the conversation were already in progress. Be aloof. Girls don't like it when you pay too much attention to them, even if they act like it.

5. Avoid leaving any sort of picture comments, especially if they include compliments. I cannot stress this enough. Every time you say "you look good" is a giant leap you are taking away from her pants. If anything, your comments should be playful/mildly insulting, but still sparse.

These are my rules. What are yours?