I haven’t been posting my Skype Scumbags recently, but one popped up today that really pissed me off. I was working away and a Skype request to share details (that is, add to my friends list) came in from a “nick desanctis”.

My Skype profile clearly states “Please be specific in your contact requests. I do not accept blind contacts, especially from idiots who think that because my profile says ‘female’, it means ’skype me’”, but I meet a lot of people in business and don’t remember all the names, so I always check the person’s profile to see if they might be someone that I’ve met rather than a garden-variety stalker. This guy was from Montreal, where I visited a few weeks ago on business, and it was a vanilla “please share your details with me” request, so I sent him a message:

[7:02:50 PM] Sandy says: do i know you? i use skype primarily for business and do not welcome unsolicited personal invitations

As soon as he responded, I realized that he was just another Skype stalker, the likes of which I see at least once a week, sometimes several times in one day:

[7:07:10 PM] nick desanctis says: hi
[7:07:43 PM] nick desanctis says: you don’t want to talk to me
[7:08:14 PM] nick desanctis says: do you have hotmail
[7:10:05 PM] nick desanctis says: so why did you talk to me

The thing that really pissed me off was his last line (”so why did you talk to me”) because it implies that because I responded to a blind invitation that could have been a valid business connection, I’m somehow “asking for it”. This is right up there with guys who think that women are asking to be sexually assaulted because they wear a short skirt or walk on the street alone at night.

I’m not the only one who gets these; a female friend of mine who says that she tends to see invitations from the “spiritual weirdos” recently received the following invitation on Skype:

Feel free to connect with me via email or [phone number] and/or via “heart subspace” (too late to unconnect there - I am already locked-on to your heart I am afraid).

“Heart subspace”??!! I don’t know whether to laugh or barf.