Hooking Up Online is a Bad Idea
From my hometown comes another reason why hooking up with strangers online isn't the best idea.A man from Houston met two strangers in a chat room on gay.com and invited them to come to his house later that night. When the men arrived, they tied him up and proceeded to steal over $40,000 worth of his belongings. Luckily the man wasn't seriously injured, but strangely enough, one of the robbers apologized for robbing him.
Another interesting twist is that this took place just a few miles from my house. That's scary.
There's no word on the sexual orientation of the robbers, but off-hand this feels like a crime of opportunity rather than a hate crime.
Look, random hook ups just aren't good ideas. Besides the fact that they have the potential to spread HIV and other STD's, people's physical safety and even their lives are also at risk.
It's pretty amazing that we as a society have an overall distrust for strangers--we certainly wouldn't hitch hike down the road, and most people won't even pull over to help a stranded motorist for safety reasons. But somehow people go online to find sex and completely let their guard down.
It goes something like, "I won't help you change that flat tire in public, but feel free to come over to my house and have sex with me." How that sounds even remotely safe to people is beyond me. Talk about mixed up priorities.
posted by Brady @ 3:56 PM
4 Comments:
good post. good point.
Thanks, Pomo!
just wondering here: how different is hooking up online versus hooking up at a bar? wouldn't it also be possible that a bar hook-up you take home can also rob you blind?
i'm asking because i wonder if straight hook-ups (on-line or real life) that turn into robberies or rapes are as titillating to report. i wonder, too, if some straights reading the mentioned article go "tsk, tsk, those gays and their random sexual encounters...that'll teach them."
kShorty-
I definitely think there was an angle to this article that received a "tsk tsk" from some straight folks.
I think hooking up at a bar can be dangerous, but possibly not quite as dangerous in my mind, and I don't think it has the titilation factor of an online hook up.
Meeting someone in a bar, you usually spend quite a bit of time with the person, in public, and talk to them for a while before the hook up. So, there are witnesses that see you together and hopefully you get a feel for the person. I'm not saying it's safe, but I guess I see it as a bit more safe given those factors. Online you never meet the person, the person stays completely anonymous, and all they have to do is walk in and rob you. No witnesses, no meeting, nothing.
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