"I was exchanging naked pictures with a man, when I realised I'd been tricked."

Sending naked pics of yourself to a stranger is dumb.

Everyone knows it.

And yet, I’ve done it so many times.

When a rogue Red Hot Pie account popped up with my pics on it, that I definitely hadn’t created, I called my brother in a panic. My brother is an ex-police officer and works as a senior investigator dealing with online abuse, so he was clearly the best person to call. 

He asked me who had naked photos of me.

I answered, “I think the question should be, who doesn’t have naked photos of me?” 

He sighed and lectured me on e-safety. 

He’s right. 

I get it.

However, I’m a gullible exhibitionist who engages in risky behaviour, and I gotta tell you, it’s a pretty chaotic combination. 

So of course, when an attractive man stopped me in the street on a balmy summer night last year, I gave him my number. It felt like a 90s romance movie.

It didn’t feel that way when he suggested sending a sexy photo.

We had chatted a little and we were getting on quite well. I was a little taken aback by the request, because for once I was being quite reserved. I was trying a new tactic in all things romance. 

But I was three wines in and wearing nice undies so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I took some pics in my underwear. 

Being a modern, savvy dating lady, I said I wouldn’t send any more unless he reciprocated.

He did. He sent pics of him and his ex, frolicking nude in a white bedroom.

This is the point alarm bells should have rung. Maybe they did, but they were dulled with by Shiraz.

The couple in the photo, which didn’t feature faces, were really hot. Like unbelievably so. 

She had extremely amazingly enhanced boobs and a belly button ring and his peen was ridiculously beautiful.

I know. I know.

I’m a fool.

But his chat was good and I trusted him.

So, I sent more pics and they became increasingly risqué.

As the wine bottle level went down, so did my inhibitions and buoyed by his candid nature, I became VERY candid.

This went on for hours. In between pics we had some really, truly great conversation.

We agreed to see each other in real life and go on a dinner date, which always feels kind of odd when someone has seen into your darkest body cavities before you meet, but sure.

Mia Freedman interviews Sophie Hyde about the surprising reason teens actually send nude photos. Post continues below. 

But then he made one little mistake. He had forgotten to blow up the picture he’d taken from a screenshot on Pornhub. So, the Pornhub logo was watermarked in the bottom corner. Every photo was a lie. 

I felt the colour drain from my face and everything started spinning. Then my face felt very hot and I was really angry. With myself, mostly.

He had tricked me.

Of course he had. 

I felt stupid, humiliated and betrayed. 

I confronted him and he said he was “being funny and can’t I take a joke?”

“It wasn’t a joke. You think I’m stupid. You didn’t think I would catch you lying.”

He apologised.

I told him he was a loser, a despicable human being and that I never wanted to speak to him again.

He seemed genuinely shocked. I guess no woman had ever lured him into a vulnerable situation and then made him feel unsafe and exposed, an experience many woman know only too well, in many different forms.

I blocked him.

And the worst thing is, my experience isn’t out of the ordinary. It didn’t even cause a blip on my group of friend’s radars. No different from when a drunk guy lurched across the street and grabbed me and kissed me violently. Or when a taxi driver exposed himself to my friend. This stuff happens all the time.

I always essentially like to think people are good, straight from the beginning. And every woman on the dating scene I know has a story where they have had to adjust that assumption at some point. Experiences that were creepy, icky, disrespectful or scary seem to be the norm. You definitely get to a point where you think that every man who shows some interest is not who he says he is and will most probably do something horrible to you. 

He contacted me on another platform again about three months ago, and asked if I was still mad at him.

Why do they always do that? I deleted the message and blocked him and pitied the next woman he would attempt to trick. 

And hoped that she would be smarter than me.