Online Dating, Part 4: The Friendster Chronicles

I have a friend that actually sometimes responds to those weird, random messages she gets from guys on Friendster. Her defense for this is "Well Cutie, they may actually be decent guys and their picture is ok." Alright... fine then, respond!

So, she spent quite a bit of time talking to this one fellow via Friendster messages. Eventually, the messages progressed to phone calls. This guy happened to live out on an army base on the east coast, and she lived here in San Francisco. About a month into their phone conversations, she finds out that he is leaving for Iraq in a few weeks. She has never met this guy, but felt like it would be wrong to let him go to Iraq without ever meeting her.

They struck up an agreement, and she flew out to Podunk, USA to visit him, and he would pay for her hotel while she was there for four days.

The trip was a total flop. He was so busy with training, he couldn't even see her most days. On top of that, he wasn't anywhere as attractive as his friendster picture had implied, so my friend was basically SOL in the chemistry/ attraction department. She finally told him she wanted to leave a day early, to which he consented. She also made him pay her for half of her airfare back to California.

Needless to say, she's not flying anywhere anymore for guys she meets on Friendster.