A SEDUCTIVE BLIND DATE
IMMANUEL ANTONIUS, Liputan6.com

Wanda, not her real name, hands me her comb. She sits with her back on me as I sit cross-legged on the floor at her room, and asks me to comb her waist-long black hair.
Wanda lights up her white cigarette. She leans her back on me. Her wet hair makes my black polo shirt wet. We talk, sharing a light moment. She takes out her mobile phone, showing me photos of the men she already met through a dating application. I am the third man she has met. She always takes any man she finds through a dating application to her home so her children know whom she is going out with. Her great curiosity overcomes her fear.

Dini, also not her real name, has a different story. An employee of an insurance company in North Jakarta, Dini says that she is seriously looking for a life partner through dating applications. Dini, who comes from West Sumatra, says that I am her seventh man she already saw in person. It takes three days to assure the blonde-dyed haired girl to let me pick her up at her boarding house. She selects men she wishes to see through dating applications because many men using the applications often ask her for sex. This scares her.

Dini has all the reasons to be scared. According to BBC, in 2013 there were 55 criminal cases implicated the world’ two biggest dating applications, the crimes ranged between sexual harassments, sexual assaults, rapes, and murder attempts. By October 2015, the number of cases increased to 412 cases.

Wanda and Dini are two out of seven people from different backgrounds I meet through a dating application in one month. It would have been impossible to date with them all in such a brief time if I did it off line. Compared to Dini who takes it cautiously, other women do not hesitate to take me not only to their home but also straight to their bedroom on our first date. They are not suspicious when asked to go to a quiet place. They have different levels of awareness, but all the women I meet through dating applications say that they never imagine that the strangers they meet could be liars.