Should you google your date? Yes, a bit. Everyone does, the people who say they don't are lying or very brave, and a quick check is basic sense when you're about to sit across a table from someone you met through a screen.
The question worth arguing about is where "a bit" ends.
Stage one is a safety check, and it's fine. Is this a real person? Do the name and the photos match? Is there anything public that should make you reconsider? Five minutes, done, tell a friend where you're going. Nobody has ever been wronged by that.
Stage two is curiosity, and it's where the trouble starts. You find the old profile, then the other old profile, then a holiday album from several years ago, then a comment under a stranger's post. None of it is secret. All of it is public. And you now know a great deal about a person who knows nothing about you, which is a lopsided way to begin a conversation.
Stage three is rehearsal. This is the one I'd draw a hard line at. You've read the favourite films, the music taste, the opinions about pineapple, and you walk in with a script. Not a lie, exactly. Just a series of coincidences you've organised in advance.
The problem with stage three is that a first date is not an information problem. You aren't there to collect facts, you're there to find out whether the two of you are any good in the same room, and that can only be measured live. A dossier doesn't help. It gets in the way, because now you're checking their answers against the file instead of listening to them.
It also makes you worse company. You laugh at the right thing a half-second too early. You know where they went to university before they've told you. You end up with the strange, slightly haunted look of someone trying not to say what they know.
There's a quieter cost too. If you've already decided who they are from their posts, the real person has to compete with the version you built. Nobody wins that, least of all the one who turned up in the flesh and is a bit different from the highlights.
So the rule I'd offer is simple. Look to check they're safe and honest. Don't look to find something to say. If a topic only exists because you found it online, leave it online. Let the conversation come up with its own material, which it usually does, and which is the entire point of going.
And if you do slip and mention something you shouldn't know, own it, lightly, and move on. The search was never the crime. Pretending you hadn't done it is.
A novel about this
I've written a comedy about the stage-three version. The Twin Flame Game follows Keith Myatt, a wealthy, restless shareholder in a global hotel empire whose job is to drift between luxury properties and avoid anything resembling commitment. When he discovers the twin flame subculture, he does what any self-respecting cynic would do. He studies it. Forums, profiles, favourite songs and books, all of it, so he can engineer the appearance of cosmic connection.
It goes about as well as you'd expect.
It's a lad-lit romcom with a lot of terrible hotels and a narrator who's funnier than he deserves to be, and it's less interested in the trick than in what happens to the man doing it. Which, I'd argue, is the better question about all that preparation.
FAQ
Should you google your date before meeting?
A light check is sensible, especially for a first meeting with someone from an app: is this a real person, do the name and photos match, is there anything alarming. That's due diligence. A forensic trawl through years of old posts is a different activity, and it usually makes the date worse.
Is it creepy to look someone up before a first date?
Not in itself. Most people expect it and plenty do it back. What reads as creepy is the way you use it: quoting something from a post they made in 2017, or arriving with suspiciously perfect common ground. If you wouldn't say it to someone you'd just met, don't let the search results say it for you.
What should you check before a first date?
The basics that bear on safety and honesty: that the person is who they say they are, that the photos and name are consistent, and that nothing public gives you a reason to rethink. Tell a friend where you're going. Then stop, and let the evening supply the rest.
Should you admit you googled them?
If it comes up, yes, lightly. Pretending you know nothing and then slipping up is far worse than saying you had a quick look. The awkward bit is never the search. It's the lie about the search.
Is there a novel about dating research gone wrong?
The Twin Flame Game is a lad-lit romcom about a wealthy hotel-empire drifter who mines forums and profiles to manufacture the look of cosmic connection. It's funnier, and kinder, than that sounds.