10/26/2010

Creeps on WWW: a true story

Was getting my daily dose of Google reader, and found this article. Brought the memories of a (totally unrelated) creepy story.

There was a silent, well-spoken, well-mannered guy in my friends' office. One problem: he hardly talked to- or about- girls. Afraid of them, we thought, and decided to play a mild prank that (we thought) would loosen him up.
The plot involved creating a fake orkut account (female) and sending a friend request to Mr. shy (this was in 2007, and very few non-geeks were on facebook.) Of course, the other friends of this fake orkut girl were fake, too. Fake roommates, fake college friends, fake tour pictures etc. We could create a comprehensive online persona then. too few tools.
The friend request said something like 'you are intelligent, kind,.../....., and I like you' (crass, I know, but dudes of his class wouldn't know the difference). slowly the interaction increased, and Mr. shy started talking 'I like you' and 'I love you'.
Now we were alarmed. all we wanted to do was to increase the confidence of the guy so that he goes out and talks to other girls. You know, when guys say 'you're good' it means nothing; when a girl says it- it has the effect of an elixir. Our fake girl idea was supposed to get him out of his desk, not fall in love.
Then the communication got complicated. We asked 'how can you fall in love with someone you haven't met or talked to', but it had no effect. The man was desperate. he took our 'I like you' post too seriously, and started behaving as if the fake girl was his girlfriend.
slowly, we started to see his ugly side. "You shouldn't address me by my first name", "I'm the man", "show me some respect" and so on. Alarmed, we deleted the fake profile.

Things got uglier. Fake roommates started getting threatening messages. "all you girls are same, ready to _____ men who have money, like the girls in my office" was one of the sanest messages he posted. I swear we never saw this twisted side of him before. I think he tried hacking the fake profile, email account etc, but there was nothing to link it back to us- or any girl.

What happened next? I don't know. My friends who started this slowly reduced their interaction with him and added his number to the 'block' list. last I heard, He's still working at the same organization- as a project manager. God save the females who work under him.

What started as a genuine concern to help someone changed our view towards so-called mankind; if something appears too good to be true, it probably is.

3 comments:

Sriram JP said...

remembering a dialogue from social network-"girls dont talk to you not b'use you are nerd b'use you are an a******"

Kris Nayak said...

Want to watch that movie man. The book was good. Hoping the movie will be, too.

Sriram JP said...

yet to read the book!