Odd Experience

So I've been logging into Yahoo Messenger these days for various reasons, not the least of which is that the radio player is no built into the messenger.  I can listen to a bunch of music I don't own and mud or browse pages at the same time.  That's about as multi tasking as I get.  If I have multiple windows open, I'm probably cutting and pasting urls. 

So anyway I'm sitting up late the other night working on a post for this blog when I get an instant message from a complete stranger.  This isn't the first time this has happened to me, so instead of just ignoring the sender as I usually do, I asked if the sender was in fact someone I knew but whose yahoo id I was unfamiliar with.  I've lost touch with a lot of people over the years and it is quite possible that they searched me out.  This, however, was not the case.  Said stranger was browsing through yahoo id profiles and came across my joblessalso profile, which has a funny picture of me with a pie and lists my occupation as mooch. 

I use Joblessalso and mooch to deter the Russian mail order brides.  I figure advertise my lack of wealth and they will stop targeting me with their scheming. 

So anyway the woman was probably looking to involve me in cyber sex, an act I find decidedly creepy.  Typing dirty thoughts to  a stranger in an attempt to arouse.  Ick.  Not that I can deny  having done it before, but I was young and I need the erm well you know.  I was hip to this woman's intent from the get go as I'm old school internet savvy from way back in the day, but I acted all stupid to prevent this unspeakable thing from occurring and in an attempt to understand what drove people like this anyways.  The woman got bored with my non sexual questioning and was suddenly tired and went away.

After finishing my thoughts on whatever it was I was ranting about at the time I thought, "Where are these yahoo Id's listed?"  If they were very public and accessible Yahoo wouldn't be able to sell a personals service  People would just search for a compatible yahoo profile.  So I did a little browsing and while I was unable to see where joblessalso is searchable I did stumble on some regional internet list and wow the things I discovered.

Holy flaming excrement!  The amount of nekkid webcam advertisings.  Then there are a bunch of women and men I believe to be in the business of physical gratification for money.  Finally there are a quite a few swingers listed.    While I knew the internet was used for these purposes, I always thought it was all related to the bad pop up windows you get when you go browsing the shadier end of the internet.  I had no idea that yahoo ids are basically being used as a sort of lets get acquainted online so we can get better acquainted for cashola later on sort of thing.  And they are everywhere.  It's not just the big cities but all across the country.  Is this how the small town hoe avoids the bar seen?

Finally I gotta think how many of these people are thieves just trying to take advantage of lonely people.  I'm betting a large portion of these listings are either scam artists or those people who pose as hookers and then blackmail yas or just turn yas into the cops.

Yahoo, for me, has become slightly more terrifying.  Maybe I wont be logging into the messenger so much anymore.

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