I'd logged into the personal ad service OKCupid. The first thing that surprised me was that I had a message in my inbox which I had not been notified of. The second was that I was surprised to see that I had a long list of "stalkers".
(Note: OKCupid's notion of "stalking" is when someone clicks on your profile. This happens to me very rarely IRL. I logged in this AM and did indeed have a "message" in my inbox, which was actually a notification that a user had added me to their "favorites" list. This was clearly not a genuine profile, someone listed in Washington with ID Olga_Wil87)
As I looked down the list to see who'd clicked on me, it was mostly all variations of the same photograph on the profile—a photograph of a woman with medium-length dark hair who was sitting next to a dog. Every account had a user name that was some variation of "Selena"—e.g. SelenaMama5, MySelena, etc.
This point of view switched to where I was reading some personals on Craigslist. Their quality surprised me--there were dozens of lengthy, interesting ads. In one of them, the woman was describing how she couldn't stop herself from going out and picking "copyfights"—elaborate anti-copyright battles that she knew she could not win. In another, one was talking about how isolated she felt and that she was going through "maniations".
(Note: In the reality I'm familiar with, Craigslist personal ads are 99.9% inane. There's a lot of obvious spam, though the most recent posting right as of this moment is this one...:
This is who I am... - 39(in Long Beach area)
Reply to: pers-1046689655@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-02-23, 7:24AM PST
I would describe myself as a striking cutie, I can admit that like most people, some aspects of me are high maintenance ... heehee, but I am also high performance. I am warm hearted, lovely, gorgeous, inviting, fit, desirable, sexy, & easy going.
Each day I chase time & therefore Im known to bee a workaholic. Although I love living my life too the fullest, I still find time for family and friends. Lookin' for a man who can handle me & take charge without stepping on my toes.
...which I'd put about on par with spam in terms of how easy it would be to auto-generate (whether it was auto-generated or not.)
