Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Obsessive Behavior

To look at that David Lynch note, you need to copy and paste the following URL in your browser:
http://davidlynch.topcities.com/mdrive/pics/prodept.jpg
(It's one of those free website providers that won't let other websites use direct links to images they host.)

Holy fricking crap. George is worrying me. I was expecting some kind of tinkering, but whole new scenes...???

Okay, there are apparently some websites out there for people who have crushes on other people, but are too chicken to do anything about it. The person with the crush can go sign up and provide the email address of the person they like. The site then sends an anonymous message to the recipient of the crush telling them that someone's got the hots for them. The recipient can then sign up at the site themselves, and have anonymous messages sent to people they have crushes on. If the site detects a match, both people are notified that they've made a love connection.

So, what does this have to do with me, you ask? No, I haven't used any of these sites, but I did get a message from one this weekend, telling me that someone has a crush on me. Now, I'm incredibly obsessive-compusive when presented with a mystery. I have to understand and solve things. It's why I've been known to work calculus problems for fun. After going through everyone I know in my mind who could have sent it, and ranking them according to likelyhood, another depressing possibility crossed my mind. There was something in the email that looked suspicious to me. The URL it gave for signing up looked like this:

http://www.SecretlyKissed.com/ukissed.asp?xs=kisses

That parameter at the end could be some kind of referral code or somesuch, meaning that this could have actually been a spam message, sent to lure people into thinking that someone had sent them this, when it was really just an ad. (The part of me trained in advertising and marketing techniques admired the tricky cleverness of such a possible scheme, evil as it may be.)

Searches of the web and usenet didn't provide any evidence that the site was a known spammer, and people do seem to be using it legitimately.

To eliminate this possibility, a test had to be performed. I signed up at the site using one of my alternate email addresses that I use for signing up for things, not caring about having them put on junk mail lists. I then had a secret crush message sent to another email address of mine. The message I sent did not have that ?xs=kisses or any other parameter on the url, and included an additional url to have the email address blocked from future mailings. Evidence (but still not solid proof) that something was up with that original email I got. I suppose there's a slim possibility that in the day that passed from the time I received the original to when I sent my test message, that they may have tweaked their automated message-sender thingy. If they were thoughtful enough to include address removal instructions on the emails sent from the site, you'd think they would do so on their actual advertisements, to conform to anti-spam legislation requirements or whatever.

Now I have a dilemma. Do I assume the original email was spam, and ignore it? If someone I am actually interested in did actually send that message (and there is at least one lady friend of mine I would be absolutely ecstatic to discover it was from, and another I would be pretty flattered by as well), then I risk them thinking I'm not interested when they never get a response. (Anybody wanna fess up?) If I do sign up and try the thing, then I risk being a pawn of some sick marketing scheme designed to capitalize on lonely people's need to feel loved. I may try it. I may not. I may have already, but am cleverly acting like I haven't so no one will know. I dunno. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. Probably not. I think about these things way too much. My brain hurts.

I'm sure you're all wondering who the two women I referred to in the last paragraph are, so I'll confess. Here they are:


THANK YOU VERY MUCH
YOUR FRIEND
JASON BELL

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