QUESTION
Would you meet someone you met or chatted with online, even if you had never seen a picture of the person?
BEN: NO
The safest answer is no, you shouldn't meet someone from online in person until he/she sends a picture to you. The only problem with that logic is there are plenty of circumstances where people already meet people who they've never met before. For instance, what if you see something in the classifieds you want to buy? If you plan to view it in person, you'll probably be meeting someone new. What if you're a door-to-door salesperson? You have to meet people you've never seen or you won't get paid! If the person cannot produce a photo (no scanner, no recent picture, etc.), judge for yourself. Do you think he/she is telling the truth? Have you known the person long enough to make that decision? If things are a little shady, just make sure to meet in a well-lit public place.
AMANDA: YES
Yes, I would be willing to meet someone I had chatted with online even if I had not seen a picture. However, there would be several requirements for me to do so. I would not travel far to meet them (unless we had agreed to meet at an annual event such as a film convention), I would meet them in a public place, and I would most likely take another friend along with me.
LINDA: NO
Internet dating and meeting people has worked for some but I don't know, I guess if you met them in a public place for the 1st time it would be okay. I guess most pen pals (pre-internet) usually send pics before they would meet. Personally I would want to know what the person looks like before I met them.
NATHAN: NO
No, absolutely not. I most likely would not meet someone I met online even if they showed me a picture. There are way too many strange people lurking around in chat rooms for me to even consider that. I read an article in the newspaper last Friday on how some guy sexually assaulted some girl he met over the internet after they met for the first time. I would not do that and I would not encourage anybody to do that either.
JOHN: YES
Well, I'd have to say that I would be willing to meet someone I chatted with online. Why not? If two people can have interesting conversation online, then, hopefully, the same thing can happen in person. There are certain rules of physical attraction that some people take entirely too seriously, but hardly anyone can neglect chemistry (even if it has come about online). Usually, people get to know each other much better through online chatting than face to face, because it's easier to talk about who you are when the other person can't see your face or your insecurities. It would help to know what someone looked like if you were going to try to meet them for the first time. Otherwise, you may just wander around the "meeting place" for a while and never meet the other person.
My only suggestion is that you really need to know quite a bit about the other person long before agreeing to meet them. I'm sure everyone is going to say something like that, probably due to personal security. However, what if you didn't know the person you were meeting was a recovering alcoholic and you wanted to set up your first meeting at a micro-brew or something. Talk about embarrassing!!!
RESULT
Would you meet someone you met or chatted with online, even if you had never seen a picture of the person? NO, 3-2
NEXT QUESTION
Do you think it's a good idea to have music playing in the background on a website?
Who is the Good Advice Committee?
That's a good question. You should at least know who is giving this supposed good advice. Besides myself, the other members are John, a bank loan processor; Linda, a community health educator; Amanda, a graphic designer; and Nate, a college biology major. It seems like a pretty diverse crowd, plus they are all experts at Internet-related things, so together, we should be able to provide pretty good advice.
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