The Dangers of Online Dating

From time to time, I find myself online dating. I don't have anything against it and am not ashamed of it, but it's not my favorite way to meet dudes. But being a shut-in hermit isn't the best way to meet the less fair sex, so sometimes I turn to it. There are (obviously) a number of weirdos on there. There are also a lot of nice guys. There aren't very many guys that I would consider dating. But, I persist. In part because some insanely good stories (or at least forwards) come out of it. And now, this blog post.

THE STORY OF CHRIS
The other night, I got an email from a guy, Coastal_Life81. Something complimentary and asking if I had gmail chat. I told him that I did, but it was under my full name and I didn't want him to know that. He said he was not a weirdo and we should chat. I was bored and he was cute,

so I made up another gmail account using my username on the site (I should note that I'm on OK Cupid now, which BY FAR, has way more pervs than any other site I've been on. I should also note that while I generally think it's totally tacky for a guy to have a shirtless pic, well, he was hot. I let it slide.). His profile said that he was a PhD in Biology, currently teaching at the University of Auckland. In his email, he said he was coming to LA soon to do research on the Channel Islands.

We start chatting, and it gets weird fast. By weird, I mean within two or three exchanges, he's told me that he has an 11-inch penis and that most of the girls in New Zealand are scared of it, so he's excited to come back to America, where girls are more "adventurous." He then proceeds to ask me all sorts of questions about my sex life. I humor him with some, refuse to answer others. I'm mostly getting a kick out of this guy. Not in the he-makes-me-hot-way, but in the I'm-basically-anonymous-and-this-doesn't-matter-way. Plus, I was IMing with a friend at the same time.  So, yeah, I was entertained. He kept steering the conversation to certain topics and I would go on some tangent and he would guide me back. Not discreetly. It was pretty obvious he wanted me to talk about fucking big dicks. I definitely had nothing to say about sex with 11-inch peens. Eventually, I got tired of it and told him I was going to bed. He persisted and then I told him it was getting old. He signed off by saying, "I think we'd have a really good repore." Repore. I guess I wasn't paying attention, but that was the first moment when I thought, "Wait, this guy has a PhD???"

Next day, I'm bored at work and decide to start doing some research. He says he's at U Auckland, so I go to their Bio department and find a lecturer with the name of Chris. Get a last name, search images. Don't see anything resembling the hunk of meat above. Check Google Scholar for academic articles. You can't have a PhD without having some publications, I reason. Find the U Auckland guy. Earliest articles are from when Chris would have been 19. Possible, but unlikely. He had to have been a bit of a prodigy and, yeah, I know this is biased, but I don't really think prodigies are that hot. Then I run into a bunch of dead ends and finally just email him and ask him his full name so I can internet stalk him. He writes back with an email address that he says I can search on Facebook. I key it in and get a profile that's totally private. I have to be his friend to see anything. Fuck that! I watched Catfish—I know that the presence of a Facebook profile means nothing. But now I had a last name (from his email and different than the University of Auckland one I'd dug up before). I google that. Nothing. Then I google it and "University of Auckland" and come upon a journal entry from a girl in NY on OK Cupid. This is it:

So, besides the fact that this is a pretty ridiculous conversation, what really struck me was that some of the things he said here, he said to me, verbatim. He was actually cutting and pasting while we were chatting! I emailed him and told him he was a fraud and that was that.  Crazy, no?

TWO GUYS

I got this email last night. My response was, "Uh, no. Also, LOL."

I am really tempted to email these guys and ask them how their quest is going. I mean, do women really respond to these sorts of things? (UPDATE: It turns out that a lot of people, females mostly (only?), don't know what a DP is. Double penetration. Wash your ears out with soap now.)

TMI

There's a question that's something like, "What's the most private thing you're willing to admit here?" Some guy responded, "I pee sitting down."

It was basically a self-castration.

Anyway, I'll share some more funny stories as they come up.