8 July 24 - 30, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Instagram began cracking down on what they label as sexually suggestive content, us- ers developed lingo to circumvent the moni- toring. Some of it is straightforward: the abbreviation “SA” stands for sexual assault, and a grape emoji generally replaces the word “rape” in a sentence. Other work- arounds, like the “mascara trend,” see users use a tube of mascara as a metaphor to talk about past relationships. The phrase “red flag” is thrown around to describe anything from a mild annoyance to a truly off-putting characteristic. Google data shows searches for the phrase “red flag” started increasing around the pandem- ic’s start before peaking in 2023. They’ve leveled out since, but the word’s popularity far outpaces pre-social media years. The “red flag” trend consists of daters listing be- haviors they won’t tolerate in a potential partner, or behaviors they ignored, trying to make a relationship work. Much of the online verbiage surrounding dating emerged in the years following the Me Too movement, when survivors of sex- ual violence demanded cultural, legal and societal changes to sexual abuse and rape culture. Under the guise of empowerment, though, Garcia said that the trends are often a repackaged version of old problems. “You’re expected to know the red flags,” Garcia said. “There’s a lot of messaging that people put out about how to be a better dater and see the red flags. But we need more in- formation about how not to be a red flag.” Garcia’s first problem with the trend is that the phrase “red flag” covers a wide range of behaviors. Take Matysiak’s same- breath mention of wearing Crocs and kiss- ing someone on the lips upon meeting, which can equate harmful behaviors to reg- ular ones. The other issue is that talking about red flags often turns into a new, coded way of placing blame on a victim for failing to note those perceived issues. Matysiak uses the term herself when talking about that IHOP date. But she also pauses, noting that sometimes the online lingo surrounding dating fails to capture the nuances that come with getting to know and accepting a person. “We all ignore red flags when we want to,” Matysiak said. “You start talking to somebody, and you’re two months in, and you’re like, ‘Hmm, is that [a red flag], is that not one?’ And to some extent, that’s part of dating, too. I have my standards, but you ad- just to things; they change.” As talking about experiences with dating violence has become more commonplace online, Garcia worries that viewers are growing to become entitled to the stories of survivors. The posting of an assailant’s face and name, for instance, started occurring in private groups before public ones as com- munities began to demand specifics in the name of protecting others. While Garcia said she understands the desire to create a supportive community of women looking out for other women, she worries that social media commenters sometimes fail to realize that there is not a Law and Order SVU-type Olivia Benson in every police station, just waiting for a survi- vor who needs justice to call. Those calls to “do something” often drastically overesti- mate how many survivors ever see justice. “You will see hundreds of comments say- ing, ‘Report him, call the police,’” Garcia said. “But it’s really difficult to go in and get the SANE exam. It’s really difficult to report. If information comes out publicly in the newspaper, that survivor carries all of that with them, not the commenters. So it feels supportive and then it also feels coercive at the same time.” The Risk of Naming Names The next time a woman does a pre-first-date Google search on the man whom Matysiak accused of raping her, Matysiak hopes her video is the first thing that pops up. It operates as a warning as much as it is an embrace of her own story, and she learned it’s an easier way to let friends and family know what happened to her without actually having to talk about it. It’s easy to forget that the internet, even behind the illusion of a private account or a private Facebook group, isn’t private, Garcia warns. While she’d never discour- age survivors from telling their stories, if that’s what they want to do, she has seen these posts be met with retaliation. In cases like sexual assault or domestic violence, an abuser has already proven their ability to harm, and publicly identifying them can amplify that response. Matysiak wasn’t thinking about those risks when she posted her video. “People need to know who he is,” she said. “It was so easy, the way that he did it, that I knew it had to have happened before.” Jennifer Mondino, senior director of the National Women’s Law Center’s Times Up Legal Defense Fund, told NPR she has seen “people in all walks of life and all kinds of indus- tries in all parts of the country” get hit with a defamation lawsuit after speak- ing out publicly about their experiences with dating vio- lence. As noted in the United Nations special re- port, a legal risk can come with naming names. The report calls it a “perverse twist in the #MeToo age,” that women who take to public forums to denounce their alleged perpetrators “are increasingly subject to defamation suits or charged with criminal libel or the false reporting of crimes.” This “weaponization” of the justice system has been effective in silencing women and un- dermining free speech, the report states. In 2020, a media report by Mother Jones found that of 100 defamation lawsuits filed in the U.S. between 2014 and 2020 that re- lated to dating violence, half were filed after the creation of the #MeToo hashtag in October 2017. “I didn’t even think, when I posted the video, about defamation,” Matysiak said. “But everything I’ve said, and everything I’ll continue to say, I have [evidence].” Publicly posting about dating violence can often incite “physical and psychological violence and threats, including Unfair Park from p6 >> p10 “THE WAY THAT HE DID IT ... I KNEW IT HAD TO HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE.” - MOLLY MATYSIAK
