The Patsy

He’d been suckered again.

He’d been contacted by a strange woman on the internet, who said she lived in the same area as him and was new to the city and wondered if he would like to meet for coffee. He hadn’t responded immediately. Being a consummate pessimist, he doubted the validity of the inquiry. The woman had provided a picture when she wrote and she was attractive and that’s when his skepticism kicked in.

Why would a pretty lady such as herself be interested in me?

He put the whole thing out of his mind and went about his day-to-day affairs.

Several days after, however, he was plagued with an unbearable sense of loneliness and responded to her email. Her email address looked inconspicuous enough and he assumed it might even be real.

So he responded.

That night he went to sleep and reflected briefly on his life. What would she say when she responded? Would they meet up and hit it off? Would his life take a turn for the better?

When he awoke the next morning he checked his email to find it flooded with junk mail. One of the addresses was hers. She had indeed not been a real person, but rather, a spambot. He’d avoided this sort of thing in the past. He’d gotten many such emails and postings in the past that preyed on the loneliness of people as a way to fool them into joining mailing lists for useless products. Many of the emails he received started with similar statements: “I’m new to town. Could you show me around?” and then they provided links to websites that sold vacuum cleaners or college educations or Viagra and Cialis.

He’d been successful at noticing these shameless techniques in the past, but perhaps he’d just been too hopeful this time.

And he was proven wrong.

He’d been suckered.

And somehow that made the loneliness he felt just a teeny bit worse.

However, he took solace in the fact that there where hundreds, if not thousands of other men out there who’ve probably fallen for the same scam. He was now part of a club: The International Association of Perpetual Chumps.

Ah, the internet...