For LOLs, I figured I’d go through my MySpace messages just from today and present to you some of the doozies. Like I said, these are just from today.
Multiple exclamation points and extra letters turn. me. the fuck. on.
I want to get next to this guy in a sexy manner, don’t you?
Uh, what?
Sigh. There are 25 more just from today, many of which don’t say more than “hi ur sexy” or some such. #1: I ain’t that hot, there are much hotter girls on MySpace (I can’t imagine what their inbox must read like!) and #2: I explicitly say on my profile that grammar and the ability to express yourself in a clear manner is of the utmost importance to me.
It’s probably the “chicks” part that throws people off. I swear half of them think I mean actual birds. :rolleyes: And they’re serious about it.
On the other hand, sometimes you get some real goodies, and it’s awesome, and you want to give them a big kiss for restoring your faith in human nature.
I put an ad in City Pages back in the 80’s. The responses were horrible.
One woman sent me a letter that sounded really nice and very interesting. Gave me her phone number to call. I called. She spent the entire time we talked vacuuming her apartment, sounding bored and annoyed at the very idea of talking to me. I tried to give her a chance, thinking maybe she’d finish her tasks and turn back into the person in her letter, but no luck. I ended up hanging up the phone when she set it down to go talk to her landlord.
Another woman sent me an incredibly rude and nasty letter asking why she would ever have anything to do with me. Seriously, how does anyone come up with the idea of doing this to a complete unknown, nameless stranger, based on a 6 line personal ad? Some sort of paranoid monomaniac who thinks that everything is about them and that celebrities are sending them coded messages in TV programs? Just freaky.
I never tried another print ad.
Signed up for an on-line service about two years ago. Got to talking to one woman who admitted to being on disability. I sent a very careful, apologetic note asking why she was on disability and noting that I was extremely sensitive about such things because my ex-wife was on disability for mental illness, and I did not want to go down that path again. The divorce was just too recent and the wounds too deep. The woman went ballistic, projecting all the worlds evils into my character. Turns out she had MS.
Um, sorry, I did specifically mention that the only thing I was worried about was MENTAL ILLNESS. So sorry that you then had to confirm that you were completely fucking nuts and extremely hostile.
The strange thing is that, after this, she did not terminate contact. I let it go about two weeks, then terminated it myself.
A few months ago I put up an ad on Toronto’s craigslist for someone to hang out with while I was visiting the city. I ended up meeting a really nice guy who took me to some fun bars and we had a great time - but the messages I had to sift through! I didn’t put up a pic in my original posting because I thought it might weed out the loonies but no such luck. Most of them went:
“u sound cool. send me a pic.”
:rolleyes: Um, no. u sound stoopid. no pic 4 u kthxbye.
Mom finally went into the dreaded realm of Electronics when I told her about VoiP and that it’s free so long as you’re PC-to-PC (her idea of using the TV remote was calling one of her children to change the channel). She’s had a Skype account for over a year.
I think it’s because I didn’t fill up my profile while she absolutely had to (blank space! Must fill it! Nature doesn’t abhor a vacuum half as much as Mom does), but while I don’t get any contacts by people not in my contacts list, she does.
Now, we’re talking about a 66yo widow from Spain. But the contacts she gets are in half a dozen languages and they’ll include things like “sxy get wbcam!!!11!! wnna sex?” Riiiiight, yeah, sure. Dude, she doesn’t even understand what you said and if she’s not interested in real guys approaching her at a movie theater I don’t think she’ll be interested in you.
I’ve taught her how to delete them, my brother also does it when he goes to visit. They can be quite eye-crossing to read.
Oh, then there was that one girl who, where the template lets you fill in a tagline, put: “Cease the day!”
I thought she was trying to be ironic or something, so I checked out her profile. Unfortunately, you could tell by the rest of her profile it was not an intentional word substitution. She seemed to be really nice, but her literacy level was heartbreakingly bad and you could tell she was trying hard. It made me sad.
I’ve never been much for the personals or things like that so I don’t encounter much. A number of years back though the wife and I were on some chat thing (logged in as her). I was doing the typing because I type faster than she does. She gets a private “whisper” from some guy who, by way of introduction, asks, “If I was a stallion, would you ride me?”
Such originality. I responded on her behalf with the first thing that popped into my head: “If I was a cyanide pill, would you eat me?”
I once received a response from a woman well into her sixties who included a photo of herself in cheesy lingerie, bewigged, with one stockinged foot up on a stool, and made up in the horrorshow garish make-up.
Her profile info noted that she was interested in “incest fantasy.”
shudder
(My girflfriend at the time got a larf out of that.)
The danger alone!
She seemed to be really nice, but her literacy level was heartbreakingly bad and you could tell she was trying hard. It made me sad.