Steven Ward eye-candyIt’s definitely part of the collective conscious today: How can you trust someone you meet online? How do you know the person you’re exchanging messages with is really who they say they are? How do you know you will be safe when you meet this person face to face? The truth is that you don’t, which is why Love Lab is such an essential product in the current dating environment.

The potential dangers of online dating are so well known now, that they are starting to leak into the pop culture Zeitgeist. Right now there are several shows on TV with plots centered around this concept, and it makes sense why – it is a real fear people have so it resonates with audiences.

Eye Candy, a new show on MTV starring Victoria Justice, is a perfect example. This is the summary from the MTV website: “Eye Candy centers on tech genius Lindy, who is persuaded by her roommate to begin online dating and begins to suspect that one of her mysterious suitors might be a deadly cyber stalker.” This may sound a bit melodramatic, and maybe it is, but if you don’t think that it is based in reality then pick up a newspaper and read about any one of the hundreds of dating nightmares being reported.

On the slightly more comical side of things, MTV also has a show called Catfish, about people who date someone online, only to find out that they are not who they said they are. The beautiful Swedish model in the pictures, for example, turns out to be some guy who lives in his parents’ basement. While this may sound somewhat amusing, keep in mind that for the person who is being misled, who has invested time and emotion into another person, it definitely isn’t funny.

I’d just like to point out that the concepts for each these shows would completely fall apart if, instead of meeting someone through just another dating app, the people in them used Love Lab.