Military, Instagram, and Words With Friends
I haven’t reactivated my Match account yet. I did set up a new one and it has gotten quite a bit of attention... but I haven’t yet plunked down the credit card. I’m ready, this time for sure. So what is holding me back? Honestly, first it was surgery recovery and now it’s simply the question: “do I have the time for dating?”
Then again, I’ve asked that question of myself for 20 years. And here I am at 42, 6 years after starting this blog, still single. Oh, there have been ups, definite ups. And there have definitely been downs. And there have been the just plain weirds, for as we all know this blog wouldn’t exist without those!
The latest chapter of the weirds comes to us from “Words With Friends”. I’m a huge nerd and I love word games. I love Scrabble, and I’m a competitive person. For a long time, my WWF profile picture was actually me. Then, the sketchy game requests started coming in. I’m not a stunner, but who doesn’t make sure their internet profile pictures are their absolute best? My average word score is in the 20s, and some guy whose average word score was like 9 would challenge me. That’s usually a red flag that the guy isn’t looking to improve his vocabulary, and sure enough, in over 90% of the cases two or three moves into the game I would get a chat message about how beautiful I was and blah blah blah. One guy fed me so much cockamamie bullshit about who he was that I actually Googled him and did a reverse image search on his profile picture. Yup, he was a complete fraud, and I called him out on it. Suddenly, that game disappeared. Gone. Poof. He didn’t resign, the whole game dropped off the face of the interwebs.
So I changed my profile picture to one of my very handsome cat, Zen. And the weird requests dried up. Until recently.
Enter a man we’ll call JC. Those aren’t his initials but they do refer to his Zynga screen name. Profile pic is a bunch of military troops in some God-forsaken desert somewhere, comparable word score. Seems legit. He chats me up and I respond because it’s not the usual. A couple of days of this and then... well, as the saying goes, that escalated quickly. It went from “getting to know you” to suddenly he’s talking about long-distance everything. Yes, including the word “relationship”.
Did I mention he’s currently in Afghanistan?
All this was without ever seeing a picture of me, only my cat. Aside from the fact he’s clearly very lonely (he’s a 50 y.o. widower), I initially had no reason to believe he’s anything other than what he says. Says he's career US Army, currently based in D.C. but deployed. And he REALLY wants me to text him. REALLY.
Slow down, cowboy.
And since I drafted this yesterday, it's turned out to be a good thing that I haven't given him any of my contact information or responded to his request to text instead of chatting on WWF. After some digging, as any internet-savvy single woman (or man) would do in this age, there are a lot of holes in his story. And at least one HUGE lie.
I get that people will try things on others online, and I certainly know plenty of people who will believe it. But don't claim to someone whose family history is inextricable from the military that you are a 5 Star General. There have been 5 Star Generals in the history of the US military, and only one is still alive. In fact, here's more of the holes in his story:
-- Google reverse image search shows JC's profile pic is one widely published of a different general, 4 star General John Nicholson, Jr. JC's profile name includes a year, which also happens to be the same as Gen. Nicholson's birth year. Nicholson was also in Afghanistan -- until last month. Now before you think that maybe I'm playing with Nicholson, I'm not. Nicholson is happily married, not a widower. Again, easily found information. Nicholson is also 61, not the 50 years old JC says he is. And lastly, the real Nicholson wouldn't pull some stupid stunt like this.
-- JC says he's from Orlando but has been based in DC working for the Pentagon. Yet he has a Chicago cell number and claims he went to Arizona State. If he went to college, you wouldn't know that by his atrocious grammar and spelling in the messages.
-- There IS someone by the name he's given me who went to Arizona State. This person is much younger and, according to his Facebook, has never been in the military.
So he's a giant fraud. I've called him out on the 5 Star General bit; we'll see if he also pulls a disappearing act. Either way, our first game is also our last. As I said to my dad, he's learning you don't screw with the daughter of a Marine.
Speaking of Marines... I’m not super active on Instagram. (Just go with me, it'll make sense in a moment.) I use Instagram mostly when I’m working out and for posting pictures of my cats. (One might be temporarily Insta-famous soon, but that’s something else.) My feed is lots of food porn, people who work out A LOT, and cats, with a smattering of my actual friends. I don’t remember who followed who first, but given my general lack of pro-activity on Instagram he probably followed me first. He sent me a few chat messages, mostly just “hello” or the ever-popular “hey pretty”, which I ignored. Then for some reason today I opted to answer, completely noncommittal. Two messages from him later, he’s sending me his phone number.
Apparently, the men in our military are pretty lonely. Well, if we presume JC is military at all.
Now this guy is allegedly a Marine and, unlike JC, I’m more inclined to believe his story than disbelieve it. He also looks like he could be my son. Granted, I frequently am mistaken for younger than I actually am, and on Instagram there’s no reason to list one’s age. He’s certainly good-looking (based on his Insta posts, but again, people don’t intentionally post lousy pictures of themselves... unless they’re my friend Beth, who prefers goofy). This one says he's currently in FL although his latest Instagram posts are from North Carolina. His phone number does come back to FL, though. I gave him my Google Voice number and he seemed skeptical as to why I was using that instead of my actual number. But as far as I'm concerned, if that is a deal-breaker, then I don't have time for you. And he did text me on it, so...
So where do I go from here? Eh, who knows. I’ve got a bunch of concerts this month, I haven’t done laundry in forever, and I desperately need to go grocery shopping and stop eating out. Hopefully on Friday I’ll be released to go back to the gym, so there’s that, too. And I have my Google Voice phone number and a membership to a data mining site.
After all, while love does involve risk, there’s no reason to be stupid.
Then again, I’ve asked that question of myself for 20 years. And here I am at 42, 6 years after starting this blog, still single. Oh, there have been ups, definite ups. And there have definitely been downs. And there have been the just plain weirds, for as we all know this blog wouldn’t exist without those!
The latest chapter of the weirds comes to us from “Words With Friends”. I’m a huge nerd and I love word games. I love Scrabble, and I’m a competitive person. For a long time, my WWF profile picture was actually me. Then, the sketchy game requests started coming in. I’m not a stunner, but who doesn’t make sure their internet profile pictures are their absolute best? My average word score is in the 20s, and some guy whose average word score was like 9 would challenge me. That’s usually a red flag that the guy isn’t looking to improve his vocabulary, and sure enough, in over 90% of the cases two or three moves into the game I would get a chat message about how beautiful I was and blah blah blah. One guy fed me so much cockamamie bullshit about who he was that I actually Googled him and did a reverse image search on his profile picture. Yup, he was a complete fraud, and I called him out on it. Suddenly, that game disappeared. Gone. Poof. He didn’t resign, the whole game dropped off the face of the interwebs.
So I changed my profile picture to one of my very handsome cat, Zen. And the weird requests dried up. Until recently.
Enter a man we’ll call JC. Those aren’t his initials but they do refer to his Zynga screen name. Profile pic is a bunch of military troops in some God-forsaken desert somewhere, comparable word score. Seems legit. He chats me up and I respond because it’s not the usual. A couple of days of this and then... well, as the saying goes, that escalated quickly. It went from “getting to know you” to suddenly he’s talking about long-distance everything. Yes, including the word “relationship”.
Did I mention he’s currently in Afghanistan?
All this was without ever seeing a picture of me, only my cat. Aside from the fact he’s clearly very lonely (he’s a 50 y.o. widower), I initially had no reason to believe he’s anything other than what he says. Says he's career US Army, currently based in D.C. but deployed. And he REALLY wants me to text him. REALLY.
Slow down, cowboy.
And since I drafted this yesterday, it's turned out to be a good thing that I haven't given him any of my contact information or responded to his request to text instead of chatting on WWF. After some digging, as any internet-savvy single woman (or man) would do in this age, there are a lot of holes in his story. And at least one HUGE lie.
I get that people will try things on others online, and I certainly know plenty of people who will believe it. But don't claim to someone whose family history is inextricable from the military that you are a 5 Star General. There have been 5 Star Generals in the history of the US military, and only one is still alive. In fact, here's more of the holes in his story:
-- Google reverse image search shows JC's profile pic is one widely published of a different general, 4 star General John Nicholson, Jr. JC's profile name includes a year, which also happens to be the same as Gen. Nicholson's birth year. Nicholson was also in Afghanistan -- until last month. Now before you think that maybe I'm playing with Nicholson, I'm not. Nicholson is happily married, not a widower. Again, easily found information. Nicholson is also 61, not the 50 years old JC says he is. And lastly, the real Nicholson wouldn't pull some stupid stunt like this.
-- JC says he's from Orlando but has been based in DC working for the Pentagon. Yet he has a Chicago cell number and claims he went to Arizona State. If he went to college, you wouldn't know that by his atrocious grammar and spelling in the messages.
-- There IS someone by the name he's given me who went to Arizona State. This person is much younger and, according to his Facebook, has never been in the military.
So he's a giant fraud. I've called him out on the 5 Star General bit; we'll see if he also pulls a disappearing act. Either way, our first game is also our last. As I said to my dad, he's learning you don't screw with the daughter of a Marine.
Speaking of Marines... I’m not super active on Instagram. (Just go with me, it'll make sense in a moment.) I use Instagram mostly when I’m working out and for posting pictures of my cats. (One might be temporarily Insta-famous soon, but that’s something else.) My feed is lots of food porn, people who work out A LOT, and cats, with a smattering of my actual friends. I don’t remember who followed who first, but given my general lack of pro-activity on Instagram he probably followed me first. He sent me a few chat messages, mostly just “hello” or the ever-popular “hey pretty”, which I ignored. Then for some reason today I opted to answer, completely noncommittal. Two messages from him later, he’s sending me his phone number.
Apparently, the men in our military are pretty lonely. Well, if we presume JC is military at all.
Now this guy is allegedly a Marine and, unlike JC, I’m more inclined to believe his story than disbelieve it. He also looks like he could be my son. Granted, I frequently am mistaken for younger than I actually am, and on Instagram there’s no reason to list one’s age. He’s certainly good-looking (based on his Insta posts, but again, people don’t intentionally post lousy pictures of themselves... unless they’re my friend Beth, who prefers goofy). This one says he's currently in FL although his latest Instagram posts are from North Carolina. His phone number does come back to FL, though. I gave him my Google Voice number and he seemed skeptical as to why I was using that instead of my actual number. But as far as I'm concerned, if that is a deal-breaker, then I don't have time for you. And he did text me on it, so...
So where do I go from here? Eh, who knows. I’ve got a bunch of concerts this month, I haven’t done laundry in forever, and I desperately need to go grocery shopping and stop eating out. Hopefully on Friday I’ll be released to go back to the gym, so there’s that, too. And I have my Google Voice phone number and a membership to a data mining site.
After all, while love does involve risk, there’s no reason to be stupid.
Comments
Post a Comment
We are all adults here. Comments are welcome, but they are also moderated because there has been a marked increase in spam, trolling, and generally snarky and nasty comments being submitted. Different opinions are welcome when expressed maturely; rude comments and links will not be published.