A few days ago I got a private Facebook message from a friend – a friend that I had actually never met and never even exchanged messages with (Facebook single life… it happens). This message was, in fact, nearly identical to one I had just received the night before from a friend in Boise (I had actually met THIS friend, I had even danced with her… if you can call what I do dancing, more like convulsing to a beat I guess). Both messages told of the same occurrence, someone was posing as me on Facebook and had begun contacting my Facebook friends. Both women sent me a link to the dude. The profile picture was mine, the last name was mine, the cover photo was also mine featuring my children, super creepy… the familial obfuscation, not my children. And interestingly, this wasn’t even the first time this had happened. A month before some woman in Poland had found me, don’t ask me how (I suspect the scam there too) to say that some guy using my picture and going by Joshua Matthew was hitting on her. We both reported this guy to Facebook, we shut him down (twice), and I never heard from her again (though I failed to ask her what pickup lines he was using and if they worked… purely for academic purposes, of course).
Now I read an article a while back alleging that a lot of these fake profiles were actually Arab men looking for dirty pictures and money from unsuspecting women… you know kind of what most men are trying, these Arab guys are just using other people’s pictures and are wearing keffiyehs. So the question I asked myself was, “why did this guy(s) knock off MY profile?” It is disturbing to picture some dude on the other side of the world grabbing my pictures to make a profile. A few friends suggested that this was actually an indirect compliment… albeit an extremely creepy one. They said he chose the profile because he thought the ladies would like it and therefor it meant that I was handsome. My ego wanted to take the compliment but the logic doesn’t pan out as he (or they) used my profile to approach women who were ALREADY my Facebook friends. So this guy figured that the women he approached on Facebook so disregarded me that he could pick up on them using the same face as one of their existing friends and none of them would notice because “this guy has a face to forget.” So, I can’t say I am feeling flattered here.
And who does Akhmal-of-the-Desert think he is moving in on another guy’s Facebook harem … most of whom I have never met in real life… and have actually never really chatted with online either (I think I might have missed the point of having a harem somewhere along the way). Even among strangers from different nations and cultures, this is breaking the man code. And besides, I have to advise that if you are going to try to pick up on women under false pretenses, shoot a little higher in the looks category next time. Pick a guy who looks like Bradley Cooper rather than a guy who looks like a poor-man’s Daniel Craig’s less attractive third cousin’s neighbor.
The other insult was that for each of these three fake profiles, my alter ego was a widow. Now again, this could appear to be a complement. “Who would divorce this charming handsome man with such beautiful children? He has to be a widow.” I know, right? But that is the angle the fake Brett’s went with. And not just a widow, my alter egos have been widowed three times!?! Suspicious don’t you think? My alter ego’s wives are dropping faster than Hillary detractors. I mean this guy must either have some life insurance scam going or he has some weird case of marital Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome. So the dude stole my face, killed my wife… all three of them… and tried to intercept ladies who might want to apply for the job next… whom the real Brett would NOT kill for the record.
Now to give Facebook credit, they shut the first two profiles down within five minutes and the other one in about 12 hours. Still from what was reported to me, Habeeb had managed to start Facebook conversations with at least five women using nothing but my face, three dead wives, and an alleged engineering degree (not a group known for their social skills – I should know). So if Creepy Habeeb had this much success in such a short time, this may bode well for the rest of us guys. Maybe we aren’t such lost causes after all. Perhaps we all just need to step out of our comfort zone a bit and get out there and we might be surprised how open and kind the women will be… even if we are totally fake.
And if that fails guys, I’ve learned that you can always create a fake profile using your own picture, a dead wife, and a fake job to start hitting on your current Facebook friends. You will then get messages from your helpful lady friends in your REAL profile telling about this new imposter pretending to be you on your FAKE profile and voilà, creepy-counterfeit-Facebook-profile-online-icebreaker successfully executed. And if all else fails, maybe I’ll just start leasing my empathy inducing profile pictures - no dead wife required. Until then, I’ll keep a wary eye out for hackers, imitators, and wannabes – and may my hacker friends choose honesty in the future or at least aspire to imitate a better looking dude.
So going forward, if you get a message from me that seems a little too charming and with no typos, it probably is NOT me. You’ve been approached by a counterfeit Brett from somewhere in the Middle East who pulled his pickup lines from watching a subtitled version of Hitch and hopes to add more ladies to his harem… his real non-virtual harem. So be safe out there.
And ef you like these writings and thenk me humor, pleez
send dollar and sexy piktures to bret-habeeb@hotmale.com,
winky smiley pritty woman. :-)
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