Not In Crazy

Dearest Rachel –

I understand that there’s an old saying about relationships: “Don’t stick your [neck] into crazy.” I’m pretty sure I’m off by a couple of letters there, but I think you get the idea.

I bring this up to update you on the story of the, ah… woman? bot? that I spoke of earlier, who for the purposes of this story, will henceforth be referred to as “Misty,” an homage to the quintessential tsundere from the early series of Pokémon.

I’ve waited for a week to go by just in case something would come up on Sunday, when everybody and her girlfriend piles onto the site, but as of Tuesday, there’s been no activity on this front. Less to report on, but all in all a relief.

Which is not to say that it wasn’t worrisome at first. After having gone against the app’s recommendation to give out a phone number (although to be fair, she’d given me hers first; I figured she’d taken the first step, so it would be rude not to volunteer my info back), she sent a flurry of texts: some amusing, others… not so much. Asking about whether I owned my home or car, and the like. Barely a few hours into connecting, she’s already insisting she could make me happy, just as long as I gave up on the site – which I’d just subscribed to barely a day or two before – and focused entirely on her. That sort of thing.

Look, that’s surely the goal of these sites, but I’m not expecting anything to pan out that quickly – and even if I find someone to actually see, who’s to say that will work out beyond that. And if it does, there are so many other points along the way when red flags might pop up. But in Misty’s case, they were almost immediate.

Keep in mind, I’m more likely at this point to think that I’ve been trolled by a bot, for whatever reason, than to be dealing with an actual woman. Still, some of this moves away from tsundere into yandere territory. I was prepared to block her if she didn’t cut that sort of talk out.

But before I did, I planned on letting her know exactly why I was about to cut her off. I thought it would only be fair to try to make her understand, out of common courtesy. Basically, I was going to call her out on her stories before blocking her. I already mentioned to you about how, when she sent photos of ‘herself’ in the phone chat, they didn’t match the ones from her profile, and how she claimed the profile pics were of her late aunt. Weird, to say the least. Then there’s the location issue: her profile talked about being from a small town just two counties over from your hometown, but then that she was tending to her aunt (another aunt, I should hope) in northern Texas. But later on, she claimed said aunt had moved down (yes, ‘down’ – I kid you not) to Maine! So what was she doing in Texas? Working as a waitress, only she said her boss had assaulted her and she had to call the cops on him, leading him to fire her, so she wasn’t working down there. Which brings us back to, why is she staying in Texas?

On top of everything else, I looked up the area code of her cell phone number: it hails from southeastern Alabama. Look, I get that a mobile phone isn’t necessarily reflective of where you actually live or are. Heck, I think Erin’s cell number still indicates a Milwaukee area code, where she’d attended college. But of the three locations Misty’s already name-checked, this is nowhere near any of them. It’s ridiculous.

So, if this is a real woman, this is not someone I wanted to be dealing with. Why, she’s telling lies when it isn’t even convenient for her to do so. Oh, and shortly after sending me the (non-matching) photos, her profile disappeared. Thankfully, she stopped texting after the first couple of days, so I never had to reply with that list; she basically dropped me rather than forcing me to block her.

On Tuesday, I received another smile out of the blue from someone who appeared to be from Des Plaines, at least in the message screen; even her profile indicated as such. So I decided to send a smile back, at which point, she responded with an actual message. But all of a sudden, her profile and now indicated that she was somewhere in Kansas, and looking for someone within 10 miles of where she lived – which would suggest that I was well out of her range. After a little bit of back-and-forth, I actually brought that up, complete with the thought that I had originally thought that she was local to me at first. Her response was something along the lines of ‘haha, God works in mysterious ways to bring us together.’

Yeah, I suppose…

She talked about being new to the system, just like myself, but isn’t there some way that we could contact each other and send photographs elsewhere?

Oh boy, have I heard this one before. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it, but as soon as she brought up the question, I realized oh hey, the app does have that functionality, should I so choose to use it. I didn’t bother to point it out at that moment, But I did suggest that end for safety sake – we stay on the app. I again reminded her that I wasn’t what she was looking for (due to her apparent distance requirements), but ‘we could still chat.’

I walked away from the computer for a few hours after that, and watched a few videos with Daniel as we ate dinner. By the time I brought Chompers back in from his late night walk, she had completely disappeared from my timeline.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Socrates

At this point, I’m starting to become somewhat philosophical about this whole online dating app. If it works out, great, but for now, it’s these crazy situations that provide fodder to perhaps entertain and amuse you.

Jan refers to using this site for entertainment purposes, but I would actually like to find someone out here. I’m not looking for drama like this… or at all, come to that. This sort of feels like someone you met through church whose name and situation I’d really rather not elaborate on, lest somebody recognize her from my description, but there was (and as far as I know, still is) a lot going on that really didn’t have to be. Some people just bring stuff onto themselves, and you do not want to get caught in the blast radius.

On the other hand, there have been cases in which I think I may have come off as the crazy one in the potential relationship. Allow me to introduce you to one I shall refer to as “Yomiko:”

Among the things that we had in common were the fact that she was into both reading and writing (although as our conversation progressed, it occurred to me that I haven’t actually been reading books for an embarrassingly long period of time, unless, like Natsuki, you can persuade your audience that manga is, in fact, literature). She also mentioned bingeing on various television series – which, considering all the ones we have stored on various hard drives throughout the house, I figured I might be able to find a connection there as well.

Unfortunately, that latter thought was shot down, as her tastes did not appear to run to science fiction in any manner. She did seem to enjoy certain Food Network shows, but considering all we bothered with were Good Eats and the original Iron Chef, the Venn diagram between us got a lot less promising as we dug into each other’s details.

The real killer, though, was when she asked about the genres I would write about. Evidently, she’s actually got a couple of novels in process, although she admitted she wasn’t taking them too seriously – it was more or less just a hobby. If I remember correctly (I’ll explain why I have to rely on memory in just a moment), one was a historical fiction, and the other a Christian romance novel – quite a broad spread.

My response, however, was probably not what she wanted to hear. Between my old fanfiction work, and the fact that my most serious writing has been to you, I’m pretty sure I freaked her out. She promptly confessed that the two of us were probably not likely to be a suitable match (and to be fair, the television shows should have been a giveaway in their own right: “If you laugh at different comics / If you root for different teams,” you’d best be prepared to ‘wash them out of your hair,’ as the song goes). Disappointing, yes, but not necessarily surprising. What I didn’t expect was the fact that her profile – and whatever conversations we’d had – once again disappeared completely from the app.

I believe the term they use nowadays is ‘ghosting,’ but it’s still a little disconcerting. The app allows one to archive a conversation, but if you don’t think to do so before the other person pulls everything out from under you, well, you’re simply out of luck. No memories, no explanation, no possibility of reviewing what might’ve gone wrong. It’s kind of crazy in its own right, and as they say, you’re not supposed to stick your neck into that.

Or other parts.

Anyway, I’ll keep plugging away. And as always, honey, wish me luck.