ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

There are a lot of whackjobs and wingnuts out there, and one of the hesitations I have regarding this blog is that, for the most part, it's incredibly easy to spot the real freaks out there. (I'm not talking about sexual freaks, those fabulous kinksters, so no one get your panties in a bundle.) Most psychos seem to carry their malfunction prominently displayed, and I'd hate to think that any of them would come here and figure out how to disguise themselves. My consolation is that, for the most part, these guys don't seem very interested in constructive input.

I was on a special interest dating site, and a new guy wrote me an email. As an opener, it was reasonable: he responded to specific things I said in my profile, and he was clearly able to communicate his interests, which seemed, at least at first, to overlap with mine. That was enough for me to give him my chat handle, and we started talking. From there, things got weird.

He started the conversation by pointing me to his photos page, where, he told me, he posts the photos that "fakers" and "players" send him, as a warning to other people. Pardon me? As in, a warning to women who might send you their photos? Or even warning us away before that? Of course, it was too late for me, since my photo was on my profile. I looked at his page to find literally hundreds of photos of women, most of them with hateful captions about how this one was a faker, that one was a liar, the one over there will say she wants to meet up but never will. He then spent the next 10-15 minutes talking about all the fakers he's met and how awful it was to try to meet people online.

Here's a clue: complaining about all the fake women you meet online is not the way to seduce a woman you meet online. Furthermore, spending a lot of time and energy putting up women's photos with mean captions shows an obsessive personality that's, at the very least, toeing the line into stalking territory.

I could go on; this guy was a real piece of work. But the main thing about him, and the thing that stands out even now, many months later, is this picture collection. This guy spends a whole hell of a lot of time obsessing about all the women who done him wrong, to the point where he'd rather do that than charm a potential new fling.

Why am I sharing this with you? Don't let this happen to you. If you find yourself becoming obsessive, negative, bitter... if the adventure of meeting people is dragging you down more than buoying you up... get the hell out and do something else for a while. Or else you'll turn into one of those people whose very existence is a warning, as well as an internally complete "Stay Back" sign.