If you're looking for "I Spys," dating or LTRs, this is your scene.
View ProfilesPublished February 7, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
Imagine Yelp for dating. Instead of restaurants, this platform revolves around men. The reviews? Mostly not so great, ranging from serious allegations of abuse to quibbles about slow texting. And, just as a lousy meal review on Yelp can repel other diners, one bad date can permanently tarnish a guy's reputation.
This isn't a "Black Mirror" episode. Are We Dating the Same Guy? is a network of more than 200 private Facebook groups in metropolitan areas around the world where women obtain crowdsourced information on potential male love interests.
Founder Paola Sanchez, a New Yorker, runs all of the network's pages. They include a group that draws from Burlington, Essex and Rutland, created in October 2022, with nearly 4,000 members. A smaller, locally run spin-off, Are We Dating the Same Man in Central Vermont?, has about 600 members.
While the groups' names suggest a focus on identifying men who are currently dating multiple women, they can suss out a lot more. Posts usually include screenshots of a man's dating profile, the first letter of his name, the town where he lives, and a caption asking for tea (read: inside intel or juicy gossip) or red flags, expressed through the appropriate emojis. Posters then leave comments sharing what they know about the man, whether through word of mouth or firsthand experience.
"Don't waste your time he's a player," a woman in the central Vermont group commented on a photo of a man holding up a fish like a trophy.
"Basically just wants to sleep around," another member added.
The intent is to warn women about men who are "liars, cheaters, abusers" or who exhibit "toxic or dangerous behavior," according to the description of the Burlington-Essex-Rutland group.
That mission is a natural response to the way apps have shaped modern dating, said Kate Mays, an assistant professor of public communication at the University of Vermont who teaches a class on social media theory. Dating apps have given people a wider pool of potential matches to pick from, she explained, and meeting a stranger online lacks the built-in vetting mechanisms of connecting in person or getting set up by a friend.
In practice, though, Mays said groups intended to keep women safe have downsides: They can become hotbeds for gossip and devolve into a "toxic mess." On social media, the punishment often doesn't match the crime. Rude behavior and mismatched expectations are more common than "fabulous con men who have wives in multiple states," she said. Yet the group puts men "on blast in front of thousands of people" for perceived missteps great and small, causing an "outsized amount of shaming and impact."
Commenters may even risk legal trouble. A Chicago man is in the process of suing Meta, which owns Facebook, and 27 women for "false and defamatory statements" after posts in his local Are We Dating the Same Guy? group alleged that he was "very clingy," "psycho" and ghosted a woman after sleeping with her, according to court documents.
To protect members, moderators allow anonymous posting and keep the pages low-profile. Men aren't allowed in the group or even supposed to know about its existence. (If you're a man, you didn't hear it from me!) Whether the group will admit nonbinary people isn't specified. Rule No. 1 of the Burlington-Essex-Rutland Facebook group states that anyone who mentions "the existence of groups like this on social media, on a podcast, on the radio, to the media, anywhere in public, or to any male friends" will be permanently banned.
That isn't a bluff. Although I was initially allowed into the Burlington-Essex-Rutland group, once word got around that I was reaching out to people as a reporter, admins banned me. And the members I'd engaged with wouldn't let me use their real names.
"The first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club," one woman messaged back.
"Those girls seem pretty cutthroat ... I'd probably be beheaded," another wrote.
A 30-year-old Fairfax resident spoke with me on the condition of anonymity. A member of the Burlington-Essex-Rutland group, she said she's found it to be a valuable resource. A few times, she's caught friends' boyfriends getting called out in posts for seeing multiple people at once. She sent screenshots of the evidence to her friends. Once, she thought her friend's boyfriend was being "shady" and posted a picture of him herself.
"Men aren't going to tell you their bad qualities when you start dating them," she said. "If there's more than one female commenting about the same issue, then it's more than likely true."
The group probably works better in Vermont than in larger metropolitan areas, she added, given that people in a smaller community are more likely to know the men being posted.
Other members aren't so enthusiastic. A 41-year-old South Burlington resident, who also asked to remain anonymous, said she has mixed feelings about the Burlington-area group. She's used it to vet guys she's seeing, but she takes the comments "with a grain of salt."
"This group is just very one-sided," she said. "It's the nature of people to go on to complain about things and not to praise."
In response to the nationwide phenomenon of such groups, some of the people who've been featured in posts have formed a Facebook group of their own: Victims of Are We Dating the Same Person (Guy/Girl), which has almost 25,000 members. All genders are welcome, including women who may have been featured in offshoot groups called Are We Dating the Same Girl? Moderator Matt Napier, an Ohio resident, said the page is a support group where people can share their side of the story.
For Napier, that mission is personal. In the group chat of Cleveland, Akron and Canton's Are We Dating the Same Guy?, someone posted the phone number of his employer's human resources director and told people to call and try to get him fired.
"I 100 percent believe in women being safe," he said in an interview. "But I think there has to be a way of doing that with also respecting people's privacy."
A man who posted in the victims' group that he was "roasted in the Burlington page" declined to comment to Seven Days. "No thank you," he wrote. "I want nothing to do with that story or that page."
Crowdsourcing info on men isn't inherently negative. Sanchez is the creator of another set of groups called Vouched Dating - Verified Guys & Group Matchmaking, where women can post referrals for men of good character. In the Burlington group, a woman recommends her brother as "a partner to enjoy life with. He works hard, has a great personality and is goofy."
But that page has only 280 members and 12 posts — one of which reads, "Not a lot of guys on here. Guess we are doomed."
The creator of the central Vermont group, who declined to be named, said she works hard to ensure that her page doesn't amplify false allegations. She started it last July, she said, after being banned from the Burlington-Essex-Rutland group, where she had commented that she believed some women were posting pictures of their exes. She wanted a similar resource to Sanchez's network with her own set of rules, such as stricter content moderation.
True to her group's name, its sole purpose is for women to see if they're dating the same guy — not to insult men. For example, a post calling a man a narcissist would not be allowed.
The creator said her page has exposed multiple instances of cheating. "If men are not doing shady things, they have nothing to worry about being posted in my group," she said. "My intention of making it was for women to look out for other women."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Doxing or Dating? | In secretive Facebook groups, Vermont women are crowdsourcing men's red flags"
Tags: Culture, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud, Love & Marriage Issue, Social Media, Are We Dating the Same Guy?, Facebook, Seven Days Aloud, Seven Days Aloud
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