My old college bud (e:lizabeth) suggested I change my Myspace user picture to one of her suggestion since she thought the current one was hideous. I heeded her advince, and today I received a myspace message from some interested girl, or at least someone purporting to be female (I'll give (e:lizabeth) 10 secs to gloat and tell me "I told you it needed changing" before I go on...one..two..three) Here's the basic gist of the message.

"Hey sexy!

I saw you on myspace in the men's section....blah blah blah...

blah-blah-blah...Long walks on the beach..blah-blah-blah..I'm honest, funnier than Jerry Seinfeld...blah-blah-blah...piña coladas and getting caught in the rain...blah-blah-blah...I'm attractive, spunky...blah-blah-blah...on the rebound after serious relationship...blah-blah-blah...I don't have a myspace account and I'm just using a friend's, so instead e-mail me at random_email@whatever.com

I'll be checking for your nice message!"

Now, I would never look a gift horse in the mouth, and I think I'm at enough time after my breakup that I'd like to start dating other people again. And it would be such an ego boost if a simple picture change were to cause such a sea change. I want to believe, I reallly do. However...

This myspace message seems a bit fishy. Having done the whole match.com thing (which (e:vincent) told me would be a waste of money and he was pretty much right), most of the people mailing me out of the blue were women (at least purporting to be women) in russia who sent overly flattering messages that were so obviously some kind of spam scam. And in those telltale spam messages, there was always the same "cut through all the red tape and e-mail me immediately" reqeusts (can we say e-mail address harvesting?). While the message I received today did actually originate (supposedly) from the account of a myspace user who supposedly lived in Buffalo (whose picture was pretty hot, if it was an actual person), who in the heck actually uses their hot friend's myspace account to message other people? Wouldn't it have made more sense to get their own account? And more importantly, English-speakers' e-mail usually does not refer to a responding message as a "nice message". It almost sounds like a phrase adapted from some foreign language where the use of the world "nice" would be less tacky.

I don't want to be embarrased enough to actual fall for a scam. We've all had the one first time where we encountered our first phishing message, where we nearly gave our credit card to someone who wasn't eBay. I surmounted that point long ago and I'm adequately jaded by ten years of using the Internet. However, at the same time I'm embarrased to seemingly look like I'm not an optimist. Could friends of hot Buffalo myspace chicks actually throw themselves at me? Sure, why not! What's wrong with that?

I guess I'll do what I do best--pocrastinate. Usually anyone who spams myspace gets their account deactivated within several days of me getting the message. If the account's still there is several days, I'll pursue this matter a little more closely.