I love social media.
There, I said it.
I know that a lot of folks don’t like it because it can be negative or people can try and scam you. I totally understand. But it’s also brought me back in touch with a lot of people from various areas of my life. If social media didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have reconnected.
If people I recognize send me a friend request or follow me on Twitter, I reciprocate more often than not. Except on one occasion.
When they’re not real.
They are known as “bots,” which is short for robot. Or they can just be men (or they may not even really be men in real life) who give me compliments in order to have me make them my boyfriends so that they can drain all of my life’s savings.
But what they don’t know is that I’ve watched nearly every episode of Unsolved Mysteries. I’ve seen it all before. Oh, and I’m happily married and not looking for a date.
That doesn’t stop them, though.
Although the photos of these guys change, some things remain the same.
The first thing that nearly all these fake “friends” have in common is that they are all widowed.
Every single one of them.
Why? Because women will find a soft spot more for a widower than for a sucktaceous scam artist who is trying to friend them while sitting in a damp basement in a foreign country, lists of stolen credit cards popping into his email.
Um, sorry. Went off a bit there. Back to the bots…
They have only a few types of jobs: they are military men (active or retired, depending on the stock photo that they’ve posted). Their photos always feature them in their uniforms—often in one that features more heavy metals than a long-haired ‘80s band.
Some of them work on oil rigs. Now this one I didn’t understand for a long time until a friend enlightened me.
“They say that they work on oil rigs, because people who do those jobs are away with no mode of communication for long periods of time,” she explained.
Oh—so if these are guys behind the fake guys, they can go about their regular scamming lives, and the women think they’re out working on oil rigs.
Oil rigs…
Finally, there are the surgeons. They’re not just plain old doctors—no, that’s not impressive enough. They’re surgeons, and you can tell by their photos.
I’ve known a number of surgeons in my life, and let me tell you, the last thing they want to do is stop surgery in the OR so that they can have a photo taken of them with the other health care workers. They want to get to the next operation, go check on their patients, or head home.
Just to recap, the men are all widowed and work in the military, on oil rigs, or as surgeons. But there’s something else they use to stand out.
These guys are always photographed with dogs, kids, shiny cars, or flowers.
If they’re with kids or dogs, women are supposed to gush, “Awww…isn’t he the best! He cares for his kids. He cares for his puppy.”
If they’re leaning on sporty cars or holding flowers, women are supposed to think, “Wow, he’s rich. And he wants to be my boyfriend.”
A guy who reached out to me recently on Twitter, though, really beat them all.
His bio said he was a military man (check), and he referred to being a single dad (widowed—check) to his loving son (check).
But when I looked at the photo he posted, it was of CNN News Anchor Anderson Cooper.
And I know for a fact that if I weren’t married, he definitely wouldn’t be interested.
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not wondering why Anderson Cooper keeps coming up as a Twitter follower, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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