The True Story of How Ming Was Fooled By A Spambot (and his own prurient curiosity).

Yesterday, out of the blue, "Anthony Prowler" wrote me from what looked like a perfectly reasonable yahoo address (prowlerboy_anthony@yahoo.com):

Hi there
I found your ad and I thought Id drop you a line hmmm,
I'm not sure where to start I will tell you a little about me.
I'm an athletic guy who loves to keep his body in shape,
so I work out as much as I can.
I work as a waiter and I enjoy my job because I get to
meet interesting people everyday. I'm not really
looking for a ltr, just some fun but I am not totally
closed off to a relationship.
Dude, if you liked my lines, drop me some at my realaddy: prowlerboy_anthony@yahoo.com. Peace!!!

I wasn't sure if this was spam. On the one hand, I hadn't posted any ads for anything calling for this sort of email in recent memory. On the other hand, perhaps he'd stumbled across one of my old personals ads from 3 to 4 years ago (when I went through a personals sites addiction phase also known as rebound).

I was somewhat suspicious, since he was "an athletic guy" (guys who responded to my personals were never "athletic guys" since I was pointedly nerdy and unathletic in my self-descriptions and said I liked boys with glasses - not exactly true, but an emerging pattern). He also appeared to have the narrative style of an eager-to-please child: "I enjoy my job because I get to meet interesting people everyday" (!)

But then I thought - well, if he is a real person, I should probably reply with something breezy and noncommittal, so as not to be rude, but also to keep my options open to some kind of action with an "athletic guy who loves to keep his body in shape". Side note: People who "love to keep their bodies in shape" have always struck me as having a faint whiff of fascism about them. So I wrote:

Hi,

Not sure which ad you're talking about. You sound cool though. Where are you based?

The reply, unfortunately, was this:

Hey there : Thanks for writing back, it was good to hear from you. I will attach my pic to this email; hopefully you get it this time. I also have a homepage: http://www.youmustbekiddingthatIwouldgivethisspambotmorehits.com I totally didn't think to send it to you last mail lol. I made it a few weeks ago so that I could show some friends my pics w/o having to send them a bunch of huge files. It has some more info on me to (if you're interested). 

Anyways, I'm just looking for something new and a bit more exciting than what I'm used to. I really want someone that knows how to have a good time and likes to enjoy life, not dread it. Oh btw, do you have anypics? If you sent any I didn't get them...

Oh ya, would you want to hang out next weekend? I usually have weekends off just not this weekend 9 At least it gives us a chance to chat and get to know each other better.

Write back soon!
-Anthony

Total lack of meaningful response to anything in my email and an odd reference to pictures I hadn't given any indication he should expect - totally a spambot. I didn't really need to click to the website to figure out that it would have a few pictures of some hot guy in skimpy outfits saying he'd "just taken the photos last week" and inviting me to come see more photos of him at a pay site. I did click. I was right.

PWNED BY SPAM!

However, I am very curious about these unusually well-written emails (they aren't exactly Booker prize worthy, but they're better than any other spam I've seen). I'm tempted to reply to this second one to see if there is a third. Even though I know there is no "Anthony", I'm curious to see his personality develop. I suspect, however, that now I've clicked on the "money link", there will be no more replies forthcoming.

Tags: ai, email, internet, spam