What with the social media dominating our lives now, regardless of its shape of form, meeting strangers from different countries is inevitable. Personally, I've met people - with or without common interests - through Facebook, Instagram, as well as GunBound (years ago) and Omegle.
The place that I frequent for drinks with friends almost always has MTV on, and at that time, Catfish the TV Show was airing. For those of you who don't watch MTV or Catfish, the show is about online relationships, and the crew helps people find out the truth about their online relationships.
This particular episode involved a girl called Amanda Miller. A young man met her on Facebook, and it seemed special between them. However, she refused calls and photo-sharing. The Catfish crew came in, and found that all the photos on Amanda's profile were all also on another girl's MySpace page.
Nev from the Catfish crew requested to meet up with Amanda, and Amanda turned out to be a homosexual man with a fake account under the name Amanda Miller.
That episode creeped me out, especially when online relationships are pretty much half of my life. I met a very good friend from Peru, from the online game GunBound, and we're still in touch. I've met other GazettE fans via Facebook fan and event pages. And I've met some very special people from Omegle, and Instagram.
So far, everyone I've met has been trustworthy, and are who they claim to be. Amanda Miller's case was pretty harmless, apart from being a fake person, "Amanda" just wanted to feel that he was attractive enough. WHAT IF Amanda had other intentions - intentions that were less than innocently harmless?
It's a wake-up call. I'm thankful to have met so many people from different countries, one who has changed my life permanently, and hopefully one to walk this path with me for a while longer. Just a reminder to those who choose to meet people through the internet - be really, REALLY careful. Just to be safe: Google them.
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