“Online action” news

I thought that those following my ridiculous, but kind of hilarious, online saga – wherein, in March, a college acquaintance started a late-night Facebook chat to try and get me to engage in cybersex, and I REPEATEDLY failed to understand what he was driving at – might be interested in an update.

First, after previously hearing from two men who’d been urged by this same guy – I’ll call him PJ, for “Pervy Jackass” – to exchange naked wife photos, and a woman who’d also been directly propositioned, I recently heard from yet another man, who I’ll call B, with whom I’d gone to college. (For those keeping score, that brings our current member count for the “I’ve-been-inappropriately-propositioned-by-PJ-via-Facebook” club up to five – though my guess is there are plenty of others out there who don’t know he’s doing this TO EVERYONE.)

B reached out to me via FB chat, too – which, admittedly, I’m now wary of, but nonetheless responded to – and he said wanted to talk to me. Now, I hadn’t chatted with or seen B in more than 10 years, so I was curious as to why. Then he wrote, “Do you remember PJ?”

“Oh,” I thought. “Now I know precisely where we’re going.”

B had reached a point where he was pretty furious. He’d been fairly close with PJ in college, and considered him a mentor of sorts. Yet here was PJ now, asking B 10 times(?!) for photos of his wife. My friend said that he’d politely dodged the issue the first few times, but he was getting progressively angrier.

“Of course you are,” I said. “He’s disrespecting you and your wife. I got angry, too.”

B asked, “Has anyone called him out on it, or just de-friended him?”

I said, “Just the latter, I think. Everyone’s so shocked by it in the moment, when it’s happening – I know I was – that they just try and get out of the situation as quickly as possible.”

I explained to B that I’d just hidden myself from his view, so that he could no longer tell when I was on FB.

But after being hidden for months, and writing repeated blog entries (which I promote via FB) about the whole sordid experience, I wondered if PJ had gotten the message somehow. So out of curiosity, I un-hid myself; and I’ll be damned if he didn’t pretty quickly write this:

give me your private e-mail.

And then this:

(no pressure, just having fun with you)

Blech. I didn’t respond. But I thought, “Dude, what are the circumstances of your life that make you this desperate?”

The following night, a “hi” appeared on the screen from him again. Thus began my foray back into hiding. (This guy has a job and a family. How does he have the time to harass everyone I knew at the University of Michigan?)

Of course, an evil part of me briefly considered engaging in a conversation with him, just for the sake of another funny blog post. But ultimately, there’s just something too pathetic and sad (and downright creepy) about this man for me to do such a thing.

B wrote that PJ had told him that he’d been trying to talk his wife into a three-way recently; and after B read my blog post, he said PJ had probably been trying to recruit me.

Ewwwwwwwwww. (That can’t be the response PJ’s looking for.) I think I have to go take a shower or something now …