Chat, Instant Messaging, and Women

Okay. I lived when BBS's ruled the world. I then ran one of the most successful systems in Florida. All that time, I was never a big "chat" person.

Now for some odd reason, I am finding myself overwhelmed with bizarro "women" who want to chat with me, the divorced man with children.

About 60% of these women are from Africa (if their profiles are to be trusted). Some of them want me to smuggle goods into the country for them, and send them money, and fly them to meet (and live!) with me.

The other 40% are women in the United States, Canada and the UK. They just want to chat and talk about things like what I do for a living, what I enjoy, what I think about them (who I don't know from a 72 year old man across the way that I've never met) and what interests me sexually.

What the hell?

I know I live in America; land of opportunity; land of "find the technicality" to bypass every rule setup; land of movies and money. But what, in all of this, would make me these people's interest? I refuse to believe that 90% of these people are serious (or that most of them are at ALL what they claim to me, including their gender), but that pessimistic attitude means that when I "toy" with these people online (to make it interesting) I am probably ALSO screwing up a possible chat with someone worthwhile.

Sometimes I simply state, the moment the window pops up "no, thank you" and ignore further texts from them.

Sometimes I decide (based on their typing patterns, which 95% of the time is all lower case and "bad english") to play the part of the oh-so-polite man who loves this moment of sharing. Other times I decide that since they're calling me "luv" and "sweety" and other such terms of familiarity (despite having known me for 37 seconds at the time) that it's time to see how far they are willing to chat. It gets rather graphic sometimes (and frankly, I'd be highly embarassed if any of these chats in particular were ever tied back to me by someone I know).

Oh well. I just thought I'd voice my feelings on this. To all you african women out there looking for a man in the US to help you smuggle diamonds (and yourself) to America... I'm not interested.