But increasingly, women are turning to their own detective work or a patchwork of investigative methods outside dating platforms: engaging in Facebook groups, sleuthing on Instagram, sharing stories on TikTok, or paying for background checks of a person whom they had a potentially illegal or bad experience with.

“When I was a resident, people were more often getting this information from friends and relatives, and oftentimes you talked about how effective a particular contraception type was or what the bleeding profile was and someone would say, ‘Well, I don’t want that one because my cousin’s friend had a bad experience with that,’” Swartz told Salon in a phone interview.

“Because everything comes from something, whether it be a bad experience or a trauma or something that has led you to want to go down the wrong path. It’s nice that we as audience members get to have that conversation with ourselves when watching characters like these as a reminder that you are one decision away from doing a bad thing.”

She had previously lost faith in medical professionals after a bad experience in her 20s, so following her diagnosis looked for alternatives to conventional treatment.

But if you come here with your friends, it’s not a bad experience.