Here's A Good Story...

This is a good one. It's kind of like the Oral Hygiene On The Highway story. Happened to me just today...

Alright, so last night I go off on my little tangent about how great it would be to have an email flirt-friend, and there's this girl on MySpace that, out of no where, has emailed me to say she wanted to be friends. I emailed her back and said that'd be cool.

Her profile says she's an L.A. girl, so it's not going anywhere beyond the Net. And unless she's EXTREMELY unbalanced, she gets that, too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not naive. I get that it's highly suspicious when a hottie (MySpace has pics in your profile, so when you email each other, you get to see what the person emailing looks like) just decides she wants to get to know me out of nowhere. I mean, I'm CUTE... But... Women usually have to have at least one several-hour, in-depth philosophical/spiritual conversation with be before they start thinking of me as a being with genitals.

Still, I'm not looking for much, right? I'm not even looking for something REAL. Just some little online flirting to distract me every now and then.

So okay. Her second email includes her personal email address as a "sign of trust". Cool. I'm down. Her emails are short, and kind of form-letter-y, but she's just being safe. So I email her from my real email addy and talk a little longer, break the ice a bit. I ask her what interested her in my profile and cop to what interests me about hers, admitting that her agressive friendliness is really attractive.

I'm at work, and I just finished the heavy portion of my job, the portion that keeps me busy the longest, and I log in to my email and see that SHE HAS ALREADY REPLIED TO MY EMAIL!!!

Hmm...

Things could be looking UP for Ray Jay...

So I take care of a couple of small things, make sure nothing here at work is going to blow up if I take a minute to read a message, and then I open her message up.

It says, like, "Hey, Honey" and "Thanks for responding to my email" and "You're so sweet" and stuff. Then it says "here's another picture of me"...

AND THEN she says "you can see me on my webcam" and sends me an URL to HER WEBSITE!!! AND TELLS ME WE CAN CHAT THERE!!! (After I clear an age check, though, which will PROBABLY involve my credit card number...)

I'm being WORKED by a PRO!

Now, I've GOT TO GIVE IT UP TO HER for her marketing strategy! Seriously, a well-deserved KUDOS to the babe for a BRILLIANT recruiting method!!! You can particularly see the cleverness of her strategy if you read my previous blog entry (I'm not trying to plug it, just making a point) and get the headspace I'm kind of sometimes in!

She doesn't know it, but I'm a PERFECT mark! (Well, ALMOST perfect; I'm a bit TOO inquisitive and attentive...)

You go to some online gathering place, email every cat who might be a potential customer, then after a couple of ingeniuously sparse -- yet flirty, don't forget the flirty! -- emails you GIVE your "personal" email address and "real" name, BEFORE THEY DO. Thus you are making yourself vulnerable. Any dude's gonna "volunteer" his real email addy right back!

(I studied magic for about a year with a buddy of mine. We call this tactic a "force". You often do it with cards. You appear to randomize the deck -- by cutting it or doing apparently arbitrary things to mix the cards up -- then tell the mark to take the top card, or middle card, or bottom card or whatever, and the card they pick is the card you have setup for them to pick. Only they believe that THEY picked that card.)

Then, when you have their email addy, THAT'S when you reel 'em in.

Now, to be honest, I haven't looked at that picture she attatched. And I haven't visited the site, either. (I'm at work, so you know... I'll wait.) So I don't know for FACT -- yet -- that I'm a mark.

But let's be REAL...

Oh, and what I intentionally DIDN'T tell you earlier -- because I didn't want to forshadow the punchline, which I KNOW you would have figured out before I did -- was that after receiving her first email I checked out her profile fairly thoroughly. Not a lot there. "I like the outdoors" and "guys who are natural and sensitive." Real sort of evasive, Beauty Queen stuff -- "If I win I'll work to stop world hunger and help the environment..."

But when you check out her FRIENDS...!!!

On MySpace you have a Friends List, which is people who have accounts on MySpace and who have agreed to put you on their Friends List also.

Her Friends List is 17 pages long (mine is 1; my teenage daughter's is 2), and it's 99% dudes! Every type of dude you can imagine, except gay!

Now, I didn't know what this meant at the time, but I made a mental note of it.

So she's insecure and needs to have the attention of a lot of guys. I can respect that. I'm one of a number. Cool. It's not like I'm looking for a girlfriend. Just an email flirt-buddy.

But I'm trying to work it out: She's not an escort, 'cause why would she look for clientele THIS far away? Maybe she's an exotic dancer? Pretty much, same question.

Her profile meantions wanting guys to "spoil" her. This is Chick Speak for "spend a lot of money on me," but this is the Internet. How would THAT apply? What, she's gonna start talking like we're girlfriend & boyfriend somewhere down the road and then ask me when I'm gonna fly her out so we can meet face-to-face? That's easy enough to deal with: "Sorry, I can't afford to." She stops emailing and it's over. Fine. I can deal with that. So I figure there's no way she can get money out of me. Let's see where this goes.

OOOOHHHH! THAT'S where this goes!!!

NOW I get it!

I simply hadn't CONSIDERED Internet porn!

But if I open up the picture she attached and she's all naked and naughty in it, (1) I'll know for certain that I've guessed correctly about her and (2) I'm TOTALLY making it my desktop wallpaper!!!

Plus, one more time, I had to laugh at the sheer GENIUS of her marketing!!! Now THAT'S some skillful entrepreneurship!!!

And I don't know if I've done the story any justice here, but the whole experience is PRETTY DAMN FUNNY!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!