Another lesson inspired by a Clien’ts story (quoted courtesy of).
“First I want to say that in my heart I believe she’s genuine. I like her very much, and I haven’t approached her with suspicion, nor do I want to.
I happened to run across ["this forum"], where a bunch of guys were discussing – her! Her letters to one of them.
I’ve seen a couple scam girls’ emails. They’re pathetic and transparent, if you think about them with the big head. These are nothing like that. I’m so confused.
Once I start reading these scam sites, it’s so easy to think “Oh my god, what if this, what if that?” I read all of the posts there and quickly realized that these guys are a bunch of cynical and jaded yahoos who are ready to see “scam” around every corner, and pat themselves and each other on the back for being so smart (me: “THIS is my competition? Sweet!”) Real winners, they. I knew they’d put themselves out of the picture when they started calling her “he”.” – “John Doe”, 46, USA.
I would add that some of these “janitors of the forest” set good women up for their stereotyped conclusions, by offering all sorts of help and making beautiful plans ostensibly in good faith and sound reason, only to “expose one more”. They also drop correspondence with girls upon having “diagnosed” them as non-scammers. But real hearts hurt (and real women often strike back).
Indeed, one should read anti-scam sites with sobriety – as much of it, as you should apply to the letters from your beautiful stranger.
1. Some girls may get on the black list through the discontented wooers’ slander. The ire of many self-anointed anti-scammers can be boiled down to these core reasons:
* Oh, she’s too beautiful, smart and multifaceted to be real. - Hey, Export-Import has always been the “higher sort” market in Eastern European countries. And Young “True Ladies” of Russian / Ukrainian culture have been required – and mostly with enjoyment! – going through that “noble maidens’ school” of reading, music, arts, sports, dances, crafts, cooking, languages, profession,.. (underscore entries, add entries,..) – instead of hanging out who-knows-where.
* Oh, she’s too linguistical and equipped. – Hey, we no longer live in log huts. Those who do, have no access to the International Bridal Fair. And it’s crazy to think about an international marriage without shared language. Long ago foreign language was indeed needless to Soviet people, restricted from trips abroad; now many girls are learning it also with this very dream of foreign marriage in mind, – let alone work demands and travel opportunities.
UPD: In 2006, Joseph has heartened his friend to communicate with one Ukrainian doctor with smooth English and Internet connection. He also had to give them much inter-cultural advice, up to their marriage, and into its startup phase. Now in March 2008, Dr. Olga, Mrs. Glenn ****, has passed her first exam for medical practice in Texas.
He’s also introduced me to Skype. Traditional international calls swallow every second syllable and chew the rest. Skype on cable Internet sounds like talking into each other’s ear. I only had to buy the headset.
* Oh, she loves Madonna, watches TV and reads women’s magazines! – The world is nothing but what we think of it. We take what is like ourselves, and refuse what is not. Russians overflip many extreme things that Westerners abuse and condemn, as if those were UFO reports.
We may like Madonna’s MUSIC, and her gutsy self-management, but boo her dalliance with the Cross and vulgar gestures. Our women’s magazines still teach us how to be feminine and to love our Men the way to make them love us, too. Sometimes we scan men’s magazines as well (and teehee quietly at vain shallowness we find there). TV is a subject for derision, and for occasional escapes from daily difficulties, “for a change of the picture”. But the program should be informative to hold one in front of the screen, or plausible as a background for cooking. )
Inquire what she reads BEYOND that stuff, Gentlemen.
The tide of Globalization has already covered our land. Let me now give an optimistic conclusion from the Law of Communicating Vessels, where water always gains an even level.
Contemporary women of Russian-Ukrainian culture – at least the future members of the Agency I have announced – are just the golden section between the West and the East. They can bring enough stability of reason, depth of spirit, love of heart, and generosity of soul back to your world.
* Oh, she has demands and expectations! – Yes, – generosity as the basis, and high above that – Kindness, Intelligence, Consideration, calm temper, sufficient time together, usually sense of humor (and not primitive), emotional competence (being open, stable and empathic), good manners, loyalty, attentive fatherhood, “the strong shoulder” (ability to defend, to resolve problems…) The appeal of healthy shape hasn’t been cancelled, too.
If she didn’t, she would have been busy reaching men closest to reach, or married to one.
* Oh, she didn’t fall for me! Oh, she’s on several sites! - It’s Online Dating International, baby. With most wanted women of the day. They seek a one-[life]-time husband. They rely on the resource too scarce and perishable to risk. They cast their network wider for more chances. They often find their profiles stolen or resold without their consent, – then remain active members of the sites they like, or put up with receiving messages from the sites that they have demanded being removed from, but to no effect.
Please scan “One in a Million” and this article.
* Oh, she talks so sweet! – Indeed, picturing future bliss is the marker tactic of flagrant scam that makes anecdotal news since 2006 (as far as I remember). Ironically, “good girls” unaware of the scam industry may also tell how important your communication feels to them, how they like you, how they imagine their family life, and explain why they are alone. Only that they usually express themselves more cautiously: responding to your own confessions and questions; referring to the man in their plot as “he”, not “you”; creating “conditional mood” instead of “future tense”; avoiding too much affection and intimacy, and holding yourself back from it.
(Unfortunately, scam evolves even to this…)
* Oh, she’s written to someone else!
I know it hurts like hex to realize. Some “machos” go into Revenge Online. The thinkers survive. The tolerant win (see “Chastity Belt”)… only if there is really someone to win, behind the screen. Let’s listen on to “John Doe”.
“It was one of her letters to me, almost verbatim! You can imagine my reaction. (I’ll pause to give you a moment to chuckle at my naivete.. ) You know in the movies, when the camera zooms up into the air, looking down on a guy lifting his arms up and yelling “NOOOOOOO!!!!!” That was me. Then I read 2 or 3 more nearly verbatim letters.”
[Natalia: Non-familiarizing letters yet, just regular ritual talk about daily life and the process of making acquaintance over the distance. Would have been re-e-eally nasty to see something lovey-dovey multiplied.]
“Ok, so I took some time to calm down, and recover from the severe ego bruise of discovering that I wasn’t the one-and-only special guy, who she picked out of billions, in an instant, to devote her life to, based on a tiny picture.
And when even more rationality returned, I saw that it could make perfect sense for a girl to cut and paste like this. Especially if she has to pay for translations. She doesn’t have a million unique things to say about herself when she’s just getting to know someone, so why pay to have slight variations translated separately? And she’s a busy professor with a 16-year old. These guys want her to write a personal letter to each of them, but they don’t realize that she’d have to be sitting in the Web café all day to accomplish this. And who does that? A scammer!
[Natalia: Many office workers - though not educators - avail themselves on work computers, if not for exchanging, then at least for composing emails.]
Assume all is as it seems, I actually kind of admire her approach! She has a dream for her life and she’s making it happen, approaching it with practicality, resourcefulness, and economy, and making it fit into her busy schedule of other responsibilities. What kind of woman does that sound like? Could it be .. a wonderful wife? So the joke would seem to be on those other rocket scientists.”
Unfortunately, “John” ’s Revelation was not accidental. The very cause of his having stumbled on the anti-scam forum, was his investigation into several red flags he had already spotted, and thus got the gut feeling of discomfort about his digital fairy.
But since this post is dedicated to false alarms, let me name one more.
2. There are many details of daily life in the Former Soviet Union, which sound odd to strangers; by the time the Western public gets familiarized with them, they go out of date and contradict the new trends!
And the Gamble of Generalizations begins. “Not everybody has a telephone there.” – “Bee Ass!” – Yes, it may be. Or not. It takes a life here to be aware of all possible individual facts and factors to construe versions.
Yours-truly, for instance, has no land line in her new apartment. Why bother with the installation, that has been known as a queuesome procedure, if you have a cell phone. A woman usually gets more mobile calls received (which is free) than initiated (texting to friends, like young generations do, is less intrusive – and less costly). For work calls, her company may compensate. Other calls per month usually fit into $6-$50, – one rarely needs a $100 contract on unlimited outgoing calls.
Still, I won’t hand out my number to someone until I’m not sure I won’t regret it later. Nor did I incur the complications of my Grandfather possibly picking up the phone at a foreign groom’s call, when I lived at our family place. You know, – specific family members sometimes have peculiar characters and undesirable worries, so it’s quite normal nowadays to inform them only when it comes to the wedding. Particularly where foreign partners are concerned.
Russian women often choose to tell a short complacent lie rather than expatiate on such explanations.
I’ll tell you more. Registered to my family flat, wherein I was raised and retain a share in ownership, I meet the state requirement of having a legal address, and aside that, I’m constitutionally unrestricted in mobility. Having moved, I have no incentive to bear the headaches of re-registration and subsequent bureaucracy, only for some snoop’s convenience at making poor art value photos of me going for groceries, to disco, or arrive from a regular coffee talk with a friend (I say, friend) of male gender. )
Russian joke: “Even if you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean no one is watching you!”
Like many other women – and, I suspect, men alike, – among other violations of privacy, I particularly loathe provocation.
“Gotta know how to test them. A little help from a few local men friends who can make her as either virginal or a ho, wouldn’t hurt either. Going to have to buy the locals a few drinks and ask them what they think about her, before the alcohol blood content gets too heavy. Better to buy for the local lady’s man/commentator so you don’t waste the Vodka.” – Canuck
What can I say?.. First, the longer you stay miles away before or after the what-next first visit, the more fictitious you and your interest seem. Meanwhile, there are local men in the lake to keep all fish awake, – unless your Web catch is exclusively oriented at a Foreign Man, not a Good Man Wherever He Comes From.
Second, our behaviors with different people depend largely on these people, their approach, and the context. The image that a woman half-consciously creates can be played up to the man’s expectations, or as contrary as to get rid of him, or idly flirtatious “not to offend yet not to proceed”. A man of the sort to consent to a role described above would be most likely kept at distance – so the experiment turns useless.
Third, do you know every woman next door enough to pass conclusions?.. The focus group setting is particularly hocum. Russian male talk under Vodka, even without the maiden honesty check intro, usually comes to a summary: “All life is crap, all gals are bitches, the sun is one old jiggered lamp”.
Joke already quoted: – “Have you laid her? – No. – Neither. – (Duet) What a whore!”
Part III. First visit to a Russian woman: Who Where?
© Comrade Natalia
(…please link to this page when using some information from it! ;)
