Anne, 22, met David on Tinder. They’ve been messaging for weeks and tonight they planned to finally go out to dinner together. Anne gets dressed up eager to meet her “handsome” date. She excitedly hops into her car to meet David at the restaurant. When she arrives though, she cannot find her Tinder date anywhere. Frustrated, holding up David’s profile, she asks a man sitting on a bench by the restaurant’s entrance if he’s seen anyone that looks like David around. The man excitedly replies that he is David. Anne cannot believe her eyes. She inspects David’s profile again, but she finds no similarities between the hot guy posing on the beach in David’s profile and the man standing in front of her. In today’s busy world, people find it easier and more convenient to communicate with others on the internet rather than talk in real life. This principle extends to dating. In fact, around 50 million people use dating sites or apps. Approximately 1 out of every 10 of these accounts, however, are considered fake. People are not always who they say they are or who they may seem to be. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Olivia and Viola demonstrate the confusion of meeting total strangers.
In order to work with Orsino, Viola dresses as a male and goes by the fake name Cesario. She then becomes a messenger for Orsino who sends her to woo Olivia for him. Olivia, however, falls head over heels for Cesario. She even says, “mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind” revealing that she thinks Cesario is attractive. Her statement also hints at the fact that Cesario is not what her sight tell her he is. On top of this then, Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, arrives in town. Olivia then mistakes him for Cesario and seeks to marry him. So, once again Olivia’s perception of a person and who she thinks they are is inaccurate. Even though Olivia and Viola’s interactions occur in real life, Olivia is unable to see Cesario’s true identity. She totally believes that he is a man and then later confuses her with her twin brother.
Because Olivia has no prior knowledge of Cesario, she has no reason to question him and just assumes he is who he says he is. Olivia easily falls for Viola’s false identity, even in real life. They have many face to face interactions and she still has no suspicions. Over the internet, faking an identity is easy, and it’s even easier for people to believe. On dating apps, just like Olivia with Viola, people have no prior knowledge of each other; they have to entirely trust each other’s profiles. These profiles though, have a 10% chance of being inaccurate and fake just like David’s. Olivia’s inability to see through Viola’s fake identity in even real life shows how risky online dating can be, as it’s even harder to spot a fake profile on the internet. People just have to decide whether or not they are willing to take that risk.
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