Not a guy, but thanks!
D’oh. My apologies for messing that up.
Our next door neighbor is confronting this very same issue (minus the LDR part) and has confided with Mrs. Cardigan and I that she’s having difficulty distinguishing between guys with a fetish and those that are attracted to her on a more wholesome/egalitarian level. She tends towards anxiety and suffers from a lack of self confidence in general, and I think that’s part of what’s making the world of dating so challenging for her.
I’ll be following this thread to see what transpires.
I wouldn’t hold my breath, as between the LD and other obstacles I doubt we’re going to meet up in the short-term, but in the interested of fighting ignorance, I will report back if there are any significant developments. 
And that’s why I’m not on Tinder…
Yeah this. When my boyfriend and I first met online, he didn’t have anything in his profile about his body type preference. It wasn’t until many years later that he casually mentioned that he likes big women, and that his previous girlfriends were thick (not as thick as me, awwww yeah!)
Now, if he would have brought it up when we first met, I might have been turned off. Even then, it would have had to be the way a guy brings it up, like perhaps “I saw that fat ass and had to send a message.” Then again, some women might like that but me personally I liked that my boyfriend said he sent me a message because he liked the movies I had listed in my profile. And if a guy was persistently and regularly mentioning my size, then I’d begin to get turned off or skeeved out.
I talked to @Cardigan a bit about his neighbor/friend. I think he mentioned that her date had brought up her size too much on their first meeting and it freaked her out. Part of it could have been the fetish vibe she got and part of it what @SanVito suggested - she doesn’t like her body shape, she doesn’t want anyone to like it because SHE doesn’t like it. And that’s ok, she has the right to reject someone for how she feels about the whole situation.
But back to what @elbows said. As far as we know this guy didn’t say anything about your shape, you went looking for it. Right off the bat he seems more interested in getting to know you than lusting over your body. Maybe that would change over time but you won’t know until you spend more time talking together. If he fetishizes you, you’ll know. Your gut will tell you.
But don’t get ahead of your gut, and tell yourself that anyone who likes anything about aspects of your body that YOU don’t like is automatically a freaky fetishist. First and foremost learn to love and accept your WHOLE self, and when someone says “oooh, that fat ass!” you say “I KNOW, RIGHT?!” 
He really is quite innocent of any of it. I think he said “pretty” once about a picture of my face, and otherwise we were just talking about common interests.
Btw, while I have my insecure moments (I think women who never do are fairly rare) I really don’t hate my looks and I know from experience that, while I am not for everyone, I have my fans. It’s not a straight-up case of “If you like me, your taste is bad”.
I’d say that anyone where an internet search shows he “follows sexy accounts” would seem skeevy to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing it, but it would just kind of creep me out, personally.
It would creep me out to know that somebody I was considering dating was checking up on me to pass judgment on whether my interests were skeevy.
The very desire to do such snooping seems deeply skeevy to me.
Evidently it takes all kinds to populate a world.
I would think some basic Googling would just be due diligence these days. I suppose it’s how far you go down that rabbit hole that it becomes creepy. I’ve been out of the internet dating pool for fifteen years now, but you bet I did a quick check on the women who were interested in me, and I would hope they did to me as well. I wasn’t paying for background checks, but, yeah, if I found a Facebook profile, I would have a look.
Additionally, any really skeevy interests aren’t going to be discovered until much later.
There’s a reason that other than SDMB I’m 100% absent from the public internet. The best OPSEC is simply to be invisible to the opposition.
When I was thinking I might soon have to start dating again, this was a real dilemma for me. Was my absolute invisibility a red flag or a green flag or no flag at all? And which flag to which kinds of possible counterparties?
Truly ‘their loss, our gain’, in every sense of the words.
As we used to say in the USAF. …
They can’t hit what they can’t see. Invisibility is the ultimate force multiplier.
Yes, that was my gut reaction, but I’m asking myself if it’s a reasonable one. I mean, demanding a date who never watches porn is going to be extremely limiting, and also, I don’t even have that as a requirement. So why does actually catching someone at it make it problematic? I am not sure myself. 
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, this guy would not have a leg to stand on as I was only able to find him because he was looking at my social media first. Which, btw, I didn’t mind at all.
A two-edged sword for sure.
I admit my attitudes are positively antique these days. And would probably have changed quickly if I had re-entered the dating scene after my long-time first wife died.
In general, it’s much easier to hold oddball opinions about stuff you don’t actually engage with. Once you’re involved in something, your attitudes tend to converge closer to the mean.
I agree, actually, that there are two sides to it, but it’s fairly standard practice. I also feel that if you meet someone IRL you usually have some more background information naturally, because of mutual friends, a common hobby or workplace etc., so checking them out online is trying to compensate for this lack of information, even if the way it does so is often not very productive.
It’s certainly has its limits, though, and at a certain point you need to be able get your information from the person themselves and trust they are not lying. If you can’t, then the relationship is probably not going places.
I personally wouldn’t find it odd at all. If you’re Gen X or older (like me), I feel like there’s a decent chance you’re off the social media grid anyway and are otherwise hard to find. My brother is practically a ghost on the internet. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Insta. Nothing.
I also think there are probably plenty of younger people, too, who stay off such things for one reason or another and leave hardly a trail, so – for me, a guy, at least – it wouldn’t be a flag of any sort.
I have a friend who was having trouble dating because he’s in Wikipedia. And Wikipedia said he was married.
He was separated. They were working towards the divorce. He was in good enough terms with his wife that she gave him constructive dating advice on Facebook. He was definitely not cheating on her. But a quick Google search and women backed away.