Jay: don't make fun of me
Jay: i'm leaving
Jay: you hurt my feelings
Jay: i might stay if you apologize
_Luna_: im sorry
_Luna_: i didnt mean to hurt your feelings
_Luna_: it was a joke
_Luna_: i just wanted to make you smile
Jay: hehe
Jay: ok
_Luna_: you dumb cunt
_Luna_: you shouldnt have gotten so offended
Jay: :[[[[[[[

roses are dead
violets are too.
I am in love but not with you.
you thought you hurt me and made me cry.
But i was in love with another guy.
Simply cause you had no class.
All you can do is kiss my ass.
you sit around and talk your shit,so fuck you.
you thought you left me but i left you.
what my man is doing you can't do.
you tell your homies you played me like a bitch.
but i tell my girls you have a small dick.
you said you loved me but it wasn't true.
so guess what mother fucker i played you too.

I received the following text message at 6:17pm on May 10th, 2008

Fwd: Do as it says: tonite the 1 u love will suddenly want u, miss u, n fall 4 u more.
If u dont send to 10 ppl (even me) u'll lose that person.

It was from my friend Daniel. I was at a band competition and I was ready to pack my things and leave, but I figured that I'd let him understand my feelings about him sending a chain letter, especially one about love.

U gay

Is what I said, not really expecting a message back, I didn't have any intention of further humiliating my dear friend, but he proceeded in making himself look more like a douche by saying:

No, i just sent it as a group message so i dont know who it went to.

He is clearly lying here because, being that my first name is Williany, I would be at the end of the list and he would have had to scroll down to pick me, instead of sending it to his first 10 ten friends. Or, maybe he has no social life and I am one of the few on his list. Either way, he knew that I would have received the chain.

I then began to wonder, "Why would Daniel be sending me this message in the first place?" So, I asked him about this strange behavior.

Why'd u send it?

His response was:

Oh i was bored and it was sent to me so i was like what the hell and i sent it so yeah I was bored.

He is clearly lying because, as everyone knows, if someone says that they are bored more than once as an explanation to doing something, they are lying. I came to the conclusion that he really did want the love of his life to be found, which wouldn't be a big deal if this wasn't relying on a....TEXT MESSAGE. I realized that my friend was in need of some serious being made fun of, and so the story begins.

Williany: Whose your tru luv? :-*

Daniel: Your gay

Daniel: lol

Thankfully, he sent that second message with the lol on it; I thought he was serious.

Williany: Good thing u sent that chain, now she'll love you for sure.

Daniel: Stupid

Now was when I started getting more devoted to making him feel uncomfortable and regretful about sending that chain letter.

Williany: Love is blind, deaf, and stupid.

Daniel: What the hell

Williany: If loving her is wrong, u don't wanna be right

Daniel: Ok, whatever

I started feeling a little more poetic around now

Williany: Clearly, she is the center of your world, u are shunning your friends for her love.

Daniel: Wow

Williany: Wow, indeed

Daniel: Ok

I had just gotten home at this point in time.

Williany: Your lips quiver at the thought of her sweet embrace.

Daniel: Where are u coming up with this stuff?

I almost had him to the point of being creeped out just a little more and he would break. I went for the throat.

Williany: Love is natural, its enchanting caress is described easily by those who understand it.

Daniel: Wtf

Ok, here I saw that he used the f word, I knew he was creeped out and disturbed, now all I had to do was slice off the head of the beast. He said "fuck" which I connected with "sex". I realized his true reasons for sending the message; he didn't send it for love, he sent it so he could get with this girl. Or at least I could make fun of him some more now.

Williany: There is no need for such vulgarity. I did not realize that these fleshly desires were your true motives. I was wrong about you. Your heart isn't pure. Its full of darkness and hate. I hope she never falls for you, Demon!

Daniel: Ok that one was weird.

At that point I stopped caring and I was eating dinner so I said,

IM EATING DINNER!

And that's about it. There's a moral to this story. DON'T SEND CHAIN LETTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m certainly not one to turn down requests (‘surprise’ chain letter memes don’t count), so here’s a shot at identifying features of the phony friendlies of the world. Those of you who’ve never encountered one can picture the stereotypical car salesman-that guy who’s always trying to convince you that he’s on your side even though he’d just love to push you into paying way more money than you really need to so his commission will be higher.

Some of you may think that sort of thieving lout is the only one with a compelling reason to fake friendliness, and that phony friendship is scarce where there’s nothing physical to gain from it. Au contraire; the readers who’ve spent time in chatrooms and forums can tell you that there’s almost always at least one jerk who tries to smooth-talk people into siding or at least sympathizing with him in any online community. Nor is this an unknown phenomenon in roleplaying, where sudden betrayal often has deadly consequences for the poor fools who trusted that character. The common link in these irritants is that they all want something from you. Sometimes it’s reasonable, sometimes it most definitely isn’t, but it should never be confused with genuine friendship if you can help it. Let’s take a look at a few specific subtypes of the phony friendly, along with a few recommendations on how to handle them:

The Whiner (yet again)

If this guy seems all too common a figure in my essays, it’s because he’s all over the place. Sometimes he’s angry, sometimes he’s scared, sometimes he’s downright pathetic, but he only considers you his friend and confidant when he wants somebody to listen to how horrible his life is. This is the same behavior as especially needy friends or people who’re going through particularly hard times, so it’s sometimes difficult to identify the whiny fake. You should be suspicious if they introduce themselves with complaints about their lives, but in general you’re going to have to humor a Whiner for awhile if you don’t want to accidentally alienate a potential friend. If they get monotonous and refuse to listen when you ask them to lighten up about it, if they never exhibit the slightest interest in anything about you and especially if they vanish from your life during their ‘high points’ in life, they’re just pity sponges soaking up your empathy (real or imagined). Bail out on them and let them try to find somebody else to whine to.

The ‘Show Me’ Buddy

“Hi there I’m your best fan ever and I’ll drown you in attention and praise and oh by the way since I’m such a good guy and all could you-“ Okay, in all fairness there are some extremely talentless people out there who really admire the ones who are good artists, writers, 3-D renderers or whatever. Some of them are highly annoying, whether because they’re always around to jabber away without realizing they are taking up a lot of time and attention or because what they’re interested in is only an incidental to that artist. This guy often acts exactly the same, but he isn’t in it for the attention of somebody he admires. He wants free stuff, and not just one or two pieces; keeping him as a friend means agreeing to a constant stream of requests that usually get more complicated as time goes on. Maybe he thinks his time is just that valuable, but you’re still the one who’s putting in all the serious effort. You should be able to tell when he’s become more of a pest than he’s worth without somebody else pointing it out; cut him off cold and he’ll probably never contact you again after a week or so of indignation, apologies and further requests.

“But All I Want Is…”

You’ll usually hear that from somebody who ‘only’ wants a chatroom/forum porn session, but it can be any request under the rainbow. This variant on the ‘Show Me’ is attached to a non-talented person, but that doesn’t mean he can’t demand concessions for his friendship. They just insist on various behaviors instead. This ranges from carefully laid traps to force you to choose between two of your ideals (“Have sex with my character or she’ll commit suicide!”) to extremely lame and pitiful power plays (“If you really cared about me, you’d sing me a love song!” Note to those who don’t use chatrooms: in that context it means writing out the lyrics, and that kind of request is really only to prove to everybody else in the room that they can get you to do what they say.). Just like with ‘Show Me,’ it should be easy to decide when their friendship is coming at too high a cost. If they start trying to screw with your morals and ethics or just don’t treat you with any true respect, why bother paying attention to them at all?

Multiple Personality Sally

Everybody’s got their buttons. They can be perfectly cheerful, polite and considerate, and suddenly they go nuts because somebody just advocated the abolishment of the NRA, admitted they’re gay, said that Hitler had the right idea… that’s natural. Touch upon a subject that they’re sensitive about, get yelled at, stay off that subject around them from then on-unless you feel like exploring why they’re so touchy about it. MPS isn’t like that; she doesn’t need a particular topic to start raging at you. It’s like seeing Beauty and the Beast in the same body. This little cretin doesn’t really want a friend; she just wants somebody who’ll tolerate her usual behavior (the Beast). The important thing to remember here is that at least she’s learning; a year ago she probably didn’t even pretend to be socialized to get people’s friendship before she started going off on them. That doesn’t mean you should be encouraging this behavior. Right now she’s getting people to make friends with a fake personality; she needs to figure out that doesn’t cut it before she’ll take the necessary steps to become the better person she’s pretending to be. Coaching somebody through that process is messy, frustrating and extremely prolonged even in person; online you have practically no chance. So unless they ask for your help, your responsibility with this wolf in sheep’s clothing is simply to be firm with your disapproval of the insulting, abusive outbursts.

Moderator’s Pet

Consider him a variation on MPS; somebody who does in fact understand that ‘the Beast’ is something shameful and wrong instead of just dropping your pretenses and acting naturally. The problem is that he reserves Beauty for those people with some degree of power in the chatroom. When they’re around its all sweetness and light and diligent good-natured helpfulness. Whenever they’re not, the Pet acts like the worst snot in the world and dares the ‘whiny crybabies’ who object to his behavior to report him. After all, when it’s his word against yours the moderators will naturally side with the one they like more. This guy is actually a pretty minor nuisance because it’s so easy to make a chatroom log these days-but there are always those moderators who don’t want to check the logs or are too attached to their first impressions to believe their beloved Pet would say such things without provocation. So this one’s to the moderators out there-keep objective, pay attention to the general attitude the room has toward any one person and don’t forget to check the logs when people start arguing about who said what and why. The Pet can absolutely ruin both the channel and your credibility, but only if you’re not paying attention.

The Revolutionary

The Pet’s inverse, the Revolutionary is usually somebody who’s been censured by moderators in the past or even had to get a new account because their first one is still banned. Rather than learning from the consequences of their misbehavior, they maintain their innocence of wrongdoing and declare the moderators are (depending on their flair for dramatics) anything from unreasonable jerks to fascist terrorists against freedom. Some of them are slightly more subtle, as if they honestly believe not insulting the moderators will make their usually over-the-top pleas to the masses go unnoticed. Some are just after the overturning of that single decision. Most want nothing less than a popular uprising against the uncouth fools who dared rule against them-even if their first account was banned for something like quoting a guide to inventive sex games in a thread about religion in literature. Naturally, as the leader of this movement for the sake of The People they expect to become too essential for anybody to do anything to him. Sometimes they even succeed, but never for very long. Either they stop championing the people the moderators slap down and fade into obscurity or they keep it up and eventually get canned completely because they’ve lost all concept of what is definitely too far out of line. Seriously, these people are trying to play the crowd that has no power against the few who have any and generally embark on that mission because they’ve already proven themselves to be troublemakers-ignore them and they’ll die off fast. Just don’t let them sucker you in with their hate speeches against the people who keep the site running; you’re marking yourself a problem case and prolonging his reign without accomplishing anything useful.

I’m sure there are others out there; the wonder of the internet is that virtually anybody can meet virtually anybody else, which spawns all kinds of underhanded behaviors in those people who prefer being manipulative jerks for their own gain and/or amusement. But this is certainly enough of a list to get you started, especially when most new internet trends are heavily based on the old ones.