Complaint Review: Webcapades - Eroticy

Now it can be told ... I was a paid member of Eroticy last month, and jumped the heck off when it became apparent the whole thing is cardboard sets and pretty sights, operated by sloppy schemers. There is a small core group of rather nice people who frequent the chat and forum areas, but the vast majority of "members" are more than likely compensated shills and misled people who long ago abandoned their profiles.

Most onsite email I received from a member with no prior contact was always of a generic nature ..... lots of light and innocuous chat about the day's errands in a too-breezy style, invariably preceded by a presumptuous salutation like, "Hey cutie", or "Hi hon", or "Hello sweety". Many initial replies from "members" were like this as well. Responses to such mails would only generate more of the same, arriving fifteen or twenty days apart, and never once referring to anything I had to say. I deliberately wrote in curious proddings -- unique items and questions that should have provoked response. None of these "members" would pass a Turing test.

Former members have accused the site of censorship ..... not of abusive and obnoxious behavior, but any content that comes too close to the hurtful truth. A couple of my early forum posts were quietly removed, posts that rather politely suggested that old and dead profiles should be removed, and pointed out the social problem of users who create uselessly thin profiles. Nothing inflammatory, and no particular people were named, yet someone with admin powers objected. I have one from another fellow archived, posted on 1 June 2005, which warns plainly:

"This website has so many fake ads it's not worth your money."

By the next week, this post was gone, but all of his other ones pining after other members remained intact.

The "Who's Online Now" feature invariably returned the same results for all three states in my chosen region, perpetually and without interruption. Better we should call it "Who's Been Online In the Past Six Months". The chat lobby averaged fifty or so names at any given hour, but more than a few would never answer when summoned nicely. Conversations in chat and forum venues ranged from insipid to puerile, nowhere near the wit and frankness I have found, for example, on Plenty of Fish.

You have never in your days seen as many bisexual and bi-curious females as in Eroticy's dubious roll call. They must outnumber all other persuasions eight to one, or so it seems. It has been suggested that this too is a come-on to help fatten the ranks. Funny part is, one of Eroticy's own quiz entries cites a survey result that says fewer than five percent of females have actually made good on a homosexual fantasy. Whatever the actual statistics are, even the least restricted search results seem awfully skewed.

The site features frequently failed, such as the time "Who's Online" doubled every single member listing. Pictures often failed to load or did so very slowly in search results. Offsite notification of inbound site email was erratic, but I eventually got wise to a pattern. Mail from those I suspected as shills went in "stealth mode", generating no notification, whereas the few legitimate messages would prompt the expected onsite "new mail" icon and mail to my private account. In the online polls and quizzes, and in notification email, spelling was atrocious, which often indicates a certain managerial carelessness. Also suspect was the fact that their third party video server would attempt to set illegal or exploitative cookies, according to warnings from my browser.

About the time my suspicions were raised high, a girl from far south of me wrote to applaud my profile and its lack of crude chest-beating about sexual prowess. She seemed far more alert and human than the usual Eroticy girl, and wise beyond her years, if her stated age was true. We had a few very enlightening email volleys about the site, wherein she revealed that a modestly pretty woman will be offered free membership, and that there are female members who do nothing but send empty teases to current members and convert those who have yet to pay up. (Later I learned the industry term is "bot", which can in fact be a person, which is even more insidious than software code for playing men as fools.) It was as if she was warning me, in a way that might slide past the site's thought police. (Thanks for the lookout, my dear, whoever you are!)

For a real laugh, you should see the notification mail that has reached me since my expiration date. Every day, near noontime, I am told some experienced and allegedly desirable member has written with keen interest. Most of them are safely too distant to actually meet; the rest are among the half dozen you could call local to me, who flatly ignored me all last month. I never had such a volume of email traffic before I zipped my wallet shut. Amazing isn't it? Even more so when you consider that I revised my profile just before sending the quit notice, replacing all of my headshots with nondescript graphics and changing my profile text to a decidedly uninviting tone. Now just what could they be seeing in me now, hmm?

Now for the puncher, which prompted this little breakdown you are kindly reading: All at once at about 15:50 EST on 19 June I received fifty .... that's five-zero .... notification messages generated (allegedly) by a female Massachussetts member. Each of them is addressed to a different recipient, all of them hinting at some interest. My receipt of them was apparently unintentional, as the originating domain is "bounced-at-EroticyMessage-dot-com" Ooooops! Were we a little clumsy or what? Each of them is date-stamped within a few seconds of each other, between 15:45:21 and 15:45:26 EST. Now, does this look like the behavior of a lonely lady making sincere contacts with individuals, or a vile shill with a free membership and a license to spam?

Multiply that by a dozen or so individuals, and you would imagine a virtual or actual room full of posers working us by the dozen, all trying to pick our pockets as we ogle their constructed profiles and dream. Now I sit back and laugh, so happy I sussed it in time. May all of you benefit by this, and spend that membership cash on some nice takeout meal instead.

NSpectr3
Providence, Rhode Island
U.S.A.