Betcha didn't know I met Brigitte on Craigslist. Yep, back in August of 2008, bored out of my skull one afternoon, I went to the "personals" section -- Men seeking Women, Women seeking Men etc.
I usually went there just to see what looney-tunes posts were up there -- and no, I'm not making the standard "I read Playboy for the articles" excuse -- I really am amazed at some of the stuff I've read, so very, very occasionally, I go read the "funny pages."
Anyway, that day I was reading some of the "Men seeking Women" posts, and I was appalled, disgusted and outraged. I fired off a post in that category excoriating the posters with blistering invective (there, two new words for your vault). Somewhere along the lines of (and I believe Brigitte still has the post squirrelled away somewhere) "I can't believe some of the things I'm reading here. Do you morons really believe a woman is going to be attracted to you after seeing a picture of your penis? Do you really think a woman is going to be attracted to you after reading all the "hot things" you are going to do to her, described in almost surgical detail? Do you really think a woman is going to be attracted to you after reading that you like "long walks by the ocean, cuddling on the sofa by the fire with a bottle of champagne, eating fabulous meals made by me" etc. etc.?
Anyway, I went on for quite a while, quoting some posts verbatim -- some so ludicrous that I could hardly believe that these were real people writing this shit -- real people standing next to me on the bus, in the line behind me at the grocery store, serving my meal at a restaurant.
To cut a long story short, Brigitte emailed me, we got into an email conversation which lasted about a week, made The Phone Call, and the rest is history.
But that's not why I'm writing this. The other day, bored out of my skull, I went on "Men seeking Women" just to see if anything had changed. Boy, had they not. If anything, they were even more ludicrous and unbelievable, but this time bordering on actual dangerous insanity. One guy posted "Watch me die".
His plea, this from a 42-year-old man, was for a woman to "come over to my apartment, have sex, get drunk and then watch me kill myself."
A couple of days later, I looked, and it was still up there. No one had flagged it, removed it, responded to it on the board . . . in short, it was business as usual at Men seeking Women.
I'm not asking you to go read these posts, but I was absolutely horrified at what some of these men were saying. Not just a few of them, but ALMOST ALL OF THEM. Mostly, it was graphic descriptions of sex acts, a lot of them in words obviously lifted from pornographic movies, but some of them were indications of very seriously disturbed minds. I would have to say that any woman actually responding to some of them would be in some serious trouble if for any reason they hooked up with these people.
The sorry thing is, there ARE women who will respond. I posted some joke ads in the forum, one with the title "Short, balding 43-year-old Sultan looking for woman to share palace" or some such, and I went on to describe (in obviously foreign-sounding English) that I was a lonely sultan living in Southeast Asia -- Brunei, to be precise -- who was short, balding and impotent, but that I wanted a woman "to share my yachts with me and fly in my private jets to destinations all over the globe and shop at Cartier in New York" blah blah blah, and that I would buy mansions for her and her extended families and give her an allowance of $100,000 a week to spend as she wished.
If you can believe it, I was deluged with replies, almost all 100% serious. Only a couple of people emailed me with a "Good one"-type of response.
I'm very shocked and dispirited -- I thought people in Montreal were a little more sophisticated and intelligent . . . but I guess I was wrong. I fear that if I went to Craigslist San Francisco or Cragslist Paris I would find much the same thing . . . it's utterly horrifying to know that there are so many very, very disturbed people out there and that they represent a real danger to themselves and others.
Those forums are a nightmarish window on the sad, insane state of humanity that have me becoming even more protective of, say, my son, but indeed, everyone I care about.
The real monsters are not the ones in books and horror movies. They're the ones delivering your mail and delivering sermons at your local synagogue or church or mosque (take your pick) . . . the ones you elected or are about to elect to public office . . . your workmates, your classmates, your cousin . . .
The only message I can draw from this is, be afraid. Be very afraid.
I too, like you, have gone to the "funny pages" for a few laughs, but usually end up feeling hopelessly disillusioned by the goings-on. So many of the lads seem to be OCD'd and obviously got their disrespectful dating tips and attitudes from porn, which is sooo pathetic, and as you say, many of the gals don't seem to mind or even like that kind of decadent shit.
ReplyDeleteBut i did wonder why it was that you chose to put your reactionary ad in the men seeking women group, when you em, intended to reach the bozos who respond to the women seeking men scategory. Perhaps your intent was to get your frustration released while at the same time, put the word out to babes like brigitte? Good tactic:) In any case, the state of things can be quite pathetic, for sure. Maybe they should have a sub-category of: "Sexually obsexxxed morons seeking women who are as dumb and debased as they are". I bet it would be quite popular to the craigslist bunch.