Sunday, March 19, 2006

MySpace: Come for the Vanity, Stay for Illiteracy!

I swear, there must have been a prison break at the Correctional Facility for the Grammatically Challenged because I have received all of the following messages on MySpace in the last 24 hours:


Subject:
hello sexy
Body:
how r u? ur pics r such a turn on id love to pleasure u orally with nothing in return write back


Dear Guy Who Doesn't Like Commas--or Most Punctuation for that Matter,

Oral pleasure for nothing in return? From some faceless stranger on the internet? My goodness, that sure is a generous offer. It's like I won the cyber-lottery. And, If your friends page is any indication, I'm sure I'd be in quality company, with "ShAnNoN" and "Luscious Latina"... yet I'm going to have to give it a miss. You know what they say, there's no such thing as a free oral pleasuring.


Subject:
u r
Body:
hot!

I am Gxxxx, 31, male, NYC.
summer over winter
beach over pool
boxerbriefs or boxers or briefs....
your turn....

Dear Gxxxxx,
Autumn over spring.
Pool over beach.
Not telling you the contents of my underwear drawer or... not telling you the contents of my underwear drawer.
Proper use of ellipses over...


Subject:
hello
Body:
hello baby i ll like 2 know u more pls tell me more abt u u can mail me
mxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com i weant 2 bee ur friend am from us my name is mxxxxx


Hello Mxxxxx,
I'm touched that you want to "bee" my friend, really I am. If you didn't obviously take your writing style from the Prince School of Naming Songs, maybe we would even have a chance. Alas, I would not die 4 u and many things do, in fact, compare 2 u. I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings. Maybe I'm just like my father, too bold. Maybe I'm just like my mother...


Subject:
No Subject
Body:
wow ma im checkin out pages and i had to stop on urs and let u know that i think ur gorgeous i really like wat i see ma so when ever u can make sure u stay in touch dont be a stranger ok cutie .... take care luv


*droolin*


Dear "99-year-old" from Kearny, NJ with the Scarface Wallpaper,

Wow. I'm checkin' out my MySpace messages and I had to stop on yours and let you know I think you have found new and astonishing ways to butcher the English language. And your photos! That one picture that zooms in on your bicep with the heading "U CaNt HaNdLe"...? I think that shows remarkable insight. It's true, I CaNt HaNdLe. I wOuLdNt EvEn TrY.


Subject:
hi bebe
Body:
Are you a model. Wow your'e very adorable and you so look young and pretty . I can't believe a sexy thing like you would be on here .You shold be out there driving all the guys wild with your sexy smile and your beauty.Well I am Rxxxx and i live in Xxxxx Xxxxxx NY . I have a pic so if you to see you may want reply back and il send to you or my aol screen name is dxxxxx im me there and ill show u my pic or email me
dxxxxxx@aol.com and i will send to you . Maybe who knows you might like talkin to me and we can get to know more about each other until then sweetness a kiss on your cheeks and a red rose for you @~~<~<~ but not as red as your lipz



Dear Rxxxx,

My name is not Bebe; are you sure you're not confusing me with Ms. Neuwurth?

Actually, I'm not a model, but gosh, how terribly flattering for you to confuse me with one! That must mean that you think I'm, like, really very adorable and young and pretty or something! You are such a charmer! And your blatant disregard for proper placement of the period is so sexy I can't stand it. You should be out there driving all the girls wild with your selective capitalization of the possessive "I". Maybe who knows you might like to learn to write a coherent sentence some day. It would be our secret. My "lipz" are sealed.

[ETA: None of the above responses were actually sent. Mocking the messages on my blog is one thing...]

42 comments:

James said...

I love your style! Anyone who can make fun of those evil people who butcher the English language is a friend of mine. You'll have to come for tea and muffins if you're ever in London.

Incidentally, have you read, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss? It's a must for all language-loving Anglophones. Anybody up for creating a geurilla aopstrophers' guild?

N said...

Vicious, absolutely vicious!

This blog is becoming more and more essential. Keep up the great work!

Dolly said...

For the record, I never sent any of those replies.

Coatman,
I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I LOVED Truss's book. I'm not exactly a grammar queen (I mix up that and which, and also split my infinitives from time to tim), but Truss conveyed the rules in a hilarious and informative way. I may just create that guerilla apostrapher's guild with you, though I do chuckle whenever I see a sign for "fresh egg's".

Transformer said...

Alright! you got my email!

jo said...

hahaha! i LOVE this. you're really good at mocking and making fun of those stupid messages.

myspace is such a pickup place. i get all kinds of messages from strange people who only seem to have porn stars as friends. i always wonder which part of me looks like a porn star??

Charlie Brown said...

This is hilarious. I wonder what kind of messages hot guys receive on dating sites.

pookalu said...

i love myspace messages. my friends and i share quality ones.

i was cringing while reading the horrible grammar and spelling of your messages. cringing.

Unknown said...

If there was any justice in the universe, all of these clowns would self-select out of reproduction by virtue of their grammar.

Sadly, some women out there are having sex with such morons. Just who, is the question.

Ladies, just say no. Or, as they might write, JuZt sey knoW, yuz all, yO!

Wombat

the sparrow said...

So glad to see that I'm not the only one who gets these kinds of messages AND cannot stand the spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and overall ickiness.

Anonymous said...

When I was online dating I got similar emails from illiterate apes and finally decided to do something very immature...I emailed one guy back and simply said, "You're a retard." I know - not nice and totally 6th grade, but whatever. Their illiterate and derogatory emails are just a intrusive and mean so what the hell! Love your blog!

Dolly said...

Jo,
I know what you mean. Whenever I look at the profiles, I wonder why the guy wants to add me when I am clearly wearing too much clothing in my photos.

Larissa,
You should join, if only for the wacky emails you'd get.

Shangrila,
Frustrating as it may be, there's also something oddly liberating about being told that everything you have come to believe about something is wrong.

Pookalu,
I think there should be a blog solely devoted to bad myspace/personals messages. Hm...

Pawlr,
You are way overthinking it. These guys are just dumb.

Betty,
It is extremely tempting to send a message like that and once in a while I snap and send something like, "do you really expect to get women like that?" but usually I ignore 'em.

Horse said...

Dolly: I think I agree with pawlr regarding myspace correspondence. Otherwise, this post would be titled "MySpace: Come for the Herrick, Stay for the Hegel!"
I've also read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, but I didn't think it was even as funny as Elements of Style, but I have a weakness for dangling participles (or should I say, having a weakness for dangling participles, Elements of Style seemed funnier to me). By the way, isn't 'my' the possessive I...whatever.
Bear in mind that these are not the types of guys that know how to talk to girls in real life. I don't think it's possible to meet cool people on myspace anyway, so, you know, I don't know what you expect when you have an account.

My word is pubxnogy. lol.

Damn It Anyway said...

Why is it women never send guys emails like that?
Do women just have more options or are guys just willing to try and get some any way they can.
Hmmmm sounds like an idea for a post.

NotCarrie said...

All I get are bands trying to be my friend.

Jim Day said...

Dolly I think your replie to those illitarate ignoramwusses on myspace was really funny and their homonim yousage was really bad too we can have a cup of coffee sumtyme and talk about it or may be u can just give me ur name phone number and soshal securitie number over the internet so we can get to know each other better whatdayathink?

Jim Day said...

Shangrila / Dolly,

Yes, the Unhooked Generation book is excellent...thanks for the recommendation. I have found it to be just as helpful for thinking about careers as for relationships. Our generation seems to have a mentality that if our everyday experience of life isn't particularly pleasurable, then we must be on the wrong path and need to make a change. I don't understand why people our age seem to lack the "suck it up and appreciate what you have got" mentality that our grandparents had, but am convinced that we would all be much happier if we learned to fight our way through discomfort rather than searching for a way to avoid it.

This reasoning has its limits, of course, but everything I have read in the book so far has been spot on.

LaMa said...

Amazing isn't it, that some guys believe this approach works? And sad, that with some it probably does work...evidence that Darwin is wrong after all? ;-)

Dolly, you should check out some women's profiles on dating sites. I guarantee you: there's a lot out there amongst them that suffer the same lack of knowledge about the proper use of punctuation, grammar and spelling. And have the same affinity for linguistic butchering practices and brain-dead content.

It's true, they probably won't send you these kind of e-mails. But they have their subtle female version of it - they put up pictures on their profiles that could well be taken directly from something like www.webcamsluths.com. After all, in this world it is often still the male that is supposed to hunt, the female that awaits in her trap.

Horse said...

Hi there, Stretch. I thought your post was funny. I will read Unhooked Generation, though. I already followed Dolly's suggestion to procure JPG's "Le Male," and it is a very nice, sweet-smelling cologne (i found it a bit unsettling when the gift bag that came with it had make-up for guys in it, although I was warned that it was marketed to the homosexual male demographic).

Stretch, are you familiar with this quote:

"The reasonable person adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable person persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress depends on unreasonable people."
(G Bernard Shaw, I think)

Sucking it up and appreciating what you got is a reasonable tack, to be sure, but I'd rather be making progress :)

Learning to fight your way through discomfort is definitely something that people any age should learn. I think people of our generation (more like the baby boomers) are more fearful of sacrifice than those in generations past, but that's just an impression I get (no hard evidence). I speak, ignorant of the book's contents. I might change my tune after having read it. Thanks for the recommendation and your opinion.

Horse said...

Lama: When you put up the URL:
www.webcamsluths.com
I thought is was a misspelling of sleuths. Like they use webcams to solve mysteries. Like Encyclopedia brown. Shows what I get for getting my hopes up.

Transformer said...

Maybe URBAN TRIBES is the other end of the spectrum of UNHOOKED GENERATION?

You can find it on Amazon. I tried posting the link, but I'm not so good at this web stuff all you kids are doing these days.

For the record, I haven't read either.

Jim Day said...

Hi Horse (pardon the pun, I just couldn't resist this morning)--

Thanks for the quote...yes, I have read it before, I think on one of these blogs or somewhere else on the internet. But I don't think Shaw was being entirely serious. Saying you must either adapt yourself to the world or make the world adapt to you is a false choice. The reality is that progress depends on people who are able to adapt / absorb reality and fit within the existing social structure just enough to keep themselves and their ideas from being dismissed.

Without getting too deep, I think there is a continuum between the self-centered "why suffer?" mentality describing our current generation in the book and the selfless-in-an-unhealthy-way that many of our ancestors exhibited, and our pendulum has swung too far in the narcissistic direction.

Brandi Love said...

I didnit no they were aloud 2 use myspace in jail.

Horse said...

Hey, Stretch: First, I wrote a joke just for you, since we're doing plays on words today:

Q: What does a UGA literature professor say to motive his students?

A: Git-R-Donne!

(don't roll your eyes too hard; you might injure yourself :)

My personal philosophy is that, to varying degrees, a person is responsible for everything that happens on earth. I'm not saying that Dolly causes hurricanes or that Stretch is responsible for bird flu, but anything that happens is, to some extent, our collective responsibility (so go help someone, even if it's yourself).

A simple example is if the drain in the shower is clogged with hair. It doesn't matter whose hair it is or how it got there, if it bothers anyone, it's my problem, and I have to find a way to fix it.

Also, I take the tack that anything that goes wrong in a relationship, I'm responsible. If a girl leaves me because she's a skank, then I should have known better than to fall in love with her. If a girl who is not a skank leaves me, it's because I didn't know how to get her to value the relationship enough not to throw it away. Again, my responsibility. I still need to read this book, though. Maybe it will give me more insight.

ps my word is aceho. at least I'm an ace!

Horse said...

Q: What does a UGA professor say to motivate his students?

Horse said...

Of course, maybe this entire post is Dolly's way of telling us she's pretty.

Congratulations Dolly!

Jim Day said...

Another quote that I think is pertinent here comes from Friedrich Nietzsche: "that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Granted, Nietzsche was not exactly a poster child for mental health and well-being, but in that case he had a point. One theme that comes through in Unhooked Generation is that couples can actually grow closer and grow in love from toughing it out through bad times...but they will be unwilling to do so if they have unrealistic expectations as to what a committed relationship would be like.

I think an important part of becoming a man or woman of character is learning to cope with suffering and discomfort in pursuit of a greater goal. For instance, in the movie "The Count of Monte Cristo," the Count had to endure 7 years in a hellish prison to emerge from his state of suspended adolesence (a term that I think applies to many 20-somethings) and into his better self. My experiences in the military, although often unpleasant, gave me the discipline and confidence to know how to handle a wide variety of situations. Relationships are similar...we have too much trouble distinguishing those relationships that shouldn't have been started from those that just need work. We are a generation that has had it so good for so long we missed out on many of the lessons our grandparents were forced to learn.

At one point or another, I have been guilty of most of the things described in Unhooked Generation, so I am no angel or paragon of old-fashioned values either. But I am trying to move more in that direction.

Jim Day said...

Pawlr--the point I am driving at is that not enough people realize that some degree of discomfort is often very useful after one takes a step back and looks at the big picture. I am not advocating a lifetime of self-denial. And I don't think this is very much like changing the AFC beliefs that you should bring a girl flowers when you meet her on a first date or call her 10 times a day to let her know how much she means to you when you have only known her a week. But your other points are well taken.

Horse said...

pawlr: If you routinely find yourself sacrificing shibboleths (how do you even say that? ;) then you are not standing up for yourself enough. Some things about you, you need to hold fast like a ship in a storm. Most things it's ok to have an open mind about. Ethics and honor are invariant. I gotta work, but i'll get back to you.

The Team said...

That is so freakin funny! i can't stop laughing my ass off! i wish you would send those replies...it might do them some good:)

Horse said...

Pawlr: never sacrifice your principles for anything, have self esteem, always control yourself, and always be a considerate gentleman. That's 100% of what it means to be α to me. Some of the PUA shit can be really stupid sometimes. If supplicating is really what you want to do, then do it!* If she doesn't like that, she doesn't like you!

You want to be the kind of guy that always does the right thing, and nobody can stop you. Whatever you determine to be right, you act on it, and that's the kind of person that you are. Existence precedes essence, amigo. Second-guessing yourself is not α. I haven't read 48 laws. I read a PUA review of it off bristol lair, though. Some of it seems underhanded, but again, I haven't read it.

One thing I learned from Freakonomics was that, if you aren't well-read, it doesn't make much difference empirically in your child's education if you read to that child at an early age or if you don't. Your child's academic success mostly depends on your academic success. If this is true of the dating world, then rather than spending all your money on a girl (presumably because of her humps), you have a better chance if you invest it in yourself (dance lessons, voice lessons, travel, even PUA workshops) and you will be more successful with women in the long run. I can dig that.

Regarding shibboleths: yeah, it's basically a secret code that isn't taught. Subcommunication is the big shibboleth in PUA culture. You learn the right signal 'word', you get an IOI. Get 3 (give or take) and you can start the negotiations ;).

*this desire must spring from deep within you without regard to consequences, as opposed to the normal assuption guys make regarding social interaction:

7. whereof I buy her dinner, thereof she must feel obligated (apologies to wittgenstein)

Girls can sniff out when you are trying to ply them with this method like girls are bloodhounds.

Hope that helps.

Horse said...

ps You're not an idiot :D

Horse said...

Oh, yeah: don't call her 10 times a day. That's not smart no matter what you want to do. I agree with stretch.

Jim Day said...

Horse...well said...and Freakonomics...another great book recommendation!

Jim Day said...

BTW Dolly--I think your post is a good example of why you should just use Friendster instead of MySpace. That's where all the quality guys are ;-)

Horse said...

dsp: I totally agree. Does knowing a lot of funny jokes make you a funny person?

Does knowing about psychology make you insightful?

Does knowing all theses routines make you attractive?

Does asking rhetorical questions make you interesting?
;)

LaMa said...

Horse said...

Lama: When you put up the URL:
www.webcamsluths.com
I thought is was a misspelling of sleuths.


Sorry Horse, the "h" was not supposed to be there. But as I am not a native speaker of English (I am Dutch) I guess you can pardon me if I butcher an English word every once in a while... ;-p

Horse said...

lama: it could be Webcam Slut High School. They could have their own football team and marching band and stuff. I would write the fight song!

Your typo made the joke better, dude!

Anonymous said...

I love your wit. I've had similar experiences with borderline Downs Syndrome sufferers on Match. Makes me want to spell and grammar check their e-mail and send it back to them.

Unknown said...

I didn't know my ex was sending you myspace messages!!! :)

darius451 said...

Ok, after reading this post...are there any women still doubting what PUAs teach? A few of these guys sending these emails were probably typicals AFCs, who just don't have the know how to talk to the lovely Dolly.

Sister Copinherhair said...

This post is hilarious! I've received some MySpace messages that are very similar. I've actually saved them for my book.

marina said...

This is brilliant. I love a good fight for proper usage of the English language.