My Photo Was Put On A Sugar Daddy Website To Catfish Men
Apparently, my username is PrettyBaby69 and I’m 41-year-old Charlotte who is looking for fun.
Author I hadn’t been on the dating market for oh, say... 18 years.
But unbeknownst to me, I’m currently out there “Looking For Fun.”
Sunday at 4:23 PM: I received a direct message on Facebook from an attractive young woman who appears to be in her early 20s.
She wrote: “Hey! I saw your profile picture on a website, I google image searched the photo to see if it was a fake profile, and somehow, I found you here. I don’t know if this is a long stretch or not, but I wanted to see if the profile was actually yours. Thanks so much!”
Hmm. Kind of vague and I was too busy to really pay attention so I quickly dashed off a note: “You bet.”
I thought she must be referring to my blog, The Woman Formerly Known As Beautiful.
Monday 5:11 PM: Then I received this message from the same young woman: “Oh, okay cool. Well to explain a little more about that it was a picture of you on the website SA. I didn’t know if that was a fake profile or not. Not trying to be creepy or anything haha. We just saw the profile and did a little Catfish research and we saw you were a blogger and a very well-spoken woman. Just wanted to make you aware. If it’s your profile I’d love to have a conversation about it. Thank you.”
Huh. A website called SA? Maybe it was a website about South Africa since I seem to have a lot of young South African men googling “fat naked lady” who somehow end up on my site. Maybe this South African website was going to fly me to Cape Town where I would participate in a chubby, middle-aged woman nude parade?
I replied: “Nope not fake. What is the SA website? Is that South Africa? Hmm. It is my profile photo, not sure what it says about me. But it’s me.”
I don’t know what the heck I was talking about as I still hadn’t seen the actual photo in which she spoke. Perhaps I’d been drinking?
Her response was instant: “Seeking Arrangement is what it stands for haha. If it is not you then I’m really bummed haha because my girlfriend and I thought you were very pretty.”
And beneath that this photo:
WTF?
Apparently, my username is PrettyBaby69 and I’m 41-year-old Charlotte who is looking for fun. And by “fun” I don’t think they mean digging for sand crabs at the beach!
Holy crap! I quickly googled “Seeking Arrangement” and this is what I found:
And then this:
Apparently, I’m a Sugar Baby (can one still be a baby at 50? I suppose I do still throw the odd tantrum) and I’m in the market for a Sugar Daddy. I suspect, however, that the Sugar Daddies look nothing like the handsome, young men in the photos.
There’s a part of me that is outraged and wants to find out exactly HOW I can get my photograph removed from the site. What if someone recognizes me (like the Pope? Or Jesus?) and I become even more infamous amongst my peers than my married-sex-confessional self already is?
And yet, what if there are hundreds of wealthy sugar daddies dying to throw their money at me so I can finally get front-row tickets to River Dance and they’ll pay anything for Michael Flatley to come out of retirement just for me? (Henry, you better step up your game!)
Pause. A sip of Wine. Ruminate. Look under my shirt at my round tummy. Another Sip of Wine. Eat an Entire Snickers Bar. Then This Thought.
What if no Sugar Daddies are biting? (Henry I love you! Please don’t ever leave me!) I suspect I’d better not play with fire and get my face off that sight right quick.
But not without first suggesting to that powers-that-be over at Seeking Arrangement that maybe they do a better job of investigating their members before they make promises like this:
Shannon Bradley-Colleary is a writer of films, books, and several teenaged/young adult journals. She is the author of To The Stars: A Novel.