Are you in the San Francisco group?

“Are We Dating The Same Guy” is a network of private Facebook groups, each one tied to a city or region. Women join the group for where they live, post a photo or a screenshot of a man they’ve met or matched with, and ask whether anyone else knows him. Here is how that works in San Francisco.

Several cities around one bay

San Francisco is the name on the group, but the dating pool covers the whole Bay Area. Oakland and Berkeley across the water, the Peninsula running south, and San Jose and the South Bay each have their own neighborhoods and nightlife, and people date between them all the time. A man in Mountain View and a woman in the Mission can match without either of them thinking twice about the distance. The Peninsula towns between the city and San Jose have a quieter social life, and many people there come into the city to date on weekends.

The groups as they stand today

The main San Francisco group doesn’t appear in Facebook search, so most men never see it. What you can find are smaller groups: a backup covering San Francisco and the Bay Area, and a separate group for San Jose and the Bay Area. Because the scene is spread across groups rather than gathered into one large one, women tend to pick the group that fits where they live, and a post can sit in a smaller group a man would never think to look in.

Bridges, BART and long commutes

Getting around the bay shapes who meets whom. BART links the city with the East Bay, and the bridges make Oakland a short trip on a quiet evening and a long one at rush hour. People often live in one city, work in a second and date in a third. That distance tends to mean fewer mutual friends, and when a woman wants to know about a man, she asks a group instead of asking around.

Tech jobs and people on the move

The tech industry brings a steady flow of people into the Bay Area and takes others away again. A man might date here for a few years and then move on, or arrive from another city with no history here at all. Either way, a post can outlast the stay, and his time in the Bay Area can stay visible in the groups after he has left. Men who relocated here for work often keep dating in the city they came from too, at least for a while.

Where we search

We start with the main group and then search the surrounding groups that a post tends to travel into: the East Bay, the South Bay and San Jose, and the California-wide groups. If you have lived in Los Angeles, Seattle or anywhere else, list it in the order notes and we’ll check there as well. Marin and the North Bay are close enough to come up as well, so mention them if they apply.

In a region this spread out, little reaches you secondhand. A check gives you a direct answer, so you aren’t left reading meaning into a quiet phone.