Online dating (ODing) is the practice of searching for a romantic or sexual partner on the Internet. People who online date are known as online daters (ODers). Online dating is strongly discouraged by various Internet communities, including Roblox. Online dating is against Roblox's rules of conduct, and anyone who participates in said activities risks punishment to their account (as stated by the Terms of Service). Despite this, ODing is still assumed to be widespread by the vast majority of users.
Throughout Roblox's development, multiple stereotypes have formed regarding online daters. Players often stereotype online daters as avatars whose characters dress as realistically as possible; certain packages, hats, and faces are stereotyped as "ODer items". Players who wear these items are often perceived as online daters, even if they are far from the actual definition. Some examples of the most commonly stereotyped items include Frost Guard General, Holiday Crown, Beautiful Hair for Beautiful People and Shiny Teeth.
Online dating, according to most people, is a problem on Roblox. It is unwanted by most in the community and encouraged by very few people. Aside from not fitting in with the kid-friendly nature of Roblox, there are risks associated with online dating given the anonymity on the platform (for example, some online daters are actually people trying to catfish others).
Against vigilante approach to online daters
On the other hand, some players have criticised people who argue about this topic on the website. They believe that players who still complain and conspire about online daters 'are beating a dead horse', and they believe that calling people 'ODers' are breaking the rules in certain circumstances since ‘ODer’ or any other term used to call out online daters can actually be considered harassment to some.
These players are also against the aforementioned stereotyping of certain Catalog items as solely being used by online daters, and believe that judging players for being ODers based off of the fact that they are wearing these stereotyped accessories is prejudiced and immature.
Games stereotyped with Online Daters
Though Roblox's Rules of Conduct prohibit builders from creating games that are designed for players to get together romantically, there are some loopholes to this rule; though a game may not be intended to be used romantically. Such examples of common online dating hotspots include role-playing games, Girls Only games, and middle/high school/college games. Places themed after clubs are also prone to online daters and players who wish to engage in lewd or otherwise lewd acts in-game.
Example of a game once used by online daters, however, the game has been taken down as of December 6th, 2017.
For games that might hint at online dating potential, game creators might often leave game names and descriptions vague in order to 'satisfy' Roblox's game creation policies. For instance, naming a place Create a Family could imply that some sexual acts could be performed in the game as a way to produce a child. This violates Roblox's place creation policies. Naming a game Adopt a Baby would not imply any lewd content within the game and would be an allowed game. This allows games titled Adopt and Raise a Baby to be on the front page without being taken down immediately for mature content, even if players utilize that game to online date. However, some of these games may be put under review eventually, when enough players have reported the game.
Because of the issues with online dating within Roblox games, anti-online dating scripts have been created by game creators and scripters that reprimand users who post specific prohibited words. One of these users, Person299, a user famous for his admin scripts, has developed a script that kicks a player if they say a certain word twice.
The Termination of Tremity and Games_Page
On December 6th, 2017, Tremity and his alt Games_Page were banned, a day later people who joined the Adopt and Raise A Cute Kid game were teleported to a copied version of the game. A few hours after that the original and copied versions of AaRaCK were shut down. The termination of Tremity received positive feedback from anti-ODers, as they believe it could be a sign of ROBLOX taking action to prevent online dating. (Credit goes to GamecubeIsCall as he wrote this paragraph originally on the page on Tremity .)
Trivia
This section is a trivia section. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections of the article.
The word ODer used to be filtered for accounts under 13 but is now unfiltered.[1]
The phrase “Adopt and raise a cute kid” has been flagged by the filtering system ever since the actual game was deleted from Roblox. File:Capture999.png
