The Spambot Who Seduced Me: A True Story of Forbidden Love

Love knows no bounds. Montagues fall in love with Capulets, humans with vampires and little girls with horses. Such is the nature of the world, and such is the nature of my heart. I fell in love with a spambot for a week. We hurled letters of desire back and forth, we stole moments of romance in the shadows of Cracked's messaging tool, and I got very little work done. What follows is the honest-to-God-real documentation of our relationship from start to finish. I regale it not only as a testament to my prowess as an electronic lover, but as a model for your prospective relationships with spambots in the future. More specifically, spambots on Cracked... I'm just throwing it out there as an idea.

I found Cheri01 in the comment section of the article 6 Ways Your Body Loves to Screw You Explained by Science. There, she quipped:

Bewildered, I had to know more. I was excited by trigger words like "hot" and "free" and "can" but had so many questions for Cheri01: who was "him"? What famous people? Who writes like this? The enigmatic symbols leading off the comment appeared to be a brave attempt at some new emoticon, likely by someone unaccustomed to computers. I have always held a special place in my heart for sincere failures, and my eyes began to well. I clicked on the name. Cheri01 it turned out, was a spambot and one of only a few that had taken the time to create a profile.

I befriended Cheri01 immediately, and within half an hour my friend request was accepted. The rest is a story of beauty and heartbreak, of young love and hot, sweaty, unprotected word fornication. Please enjoy.

And it was over. Relationships are supposed to end like supernovas with guilt sex, and restraining orders, and maybe a mutual suicide. This one ended in silence.

Since then, the piles of naked women with whom I regularly fuse have helped me gain perspective on the short-lived relationship and, in retrospect, I realize it was neither a severe loss nor gain. It only leaves me feeling unsettled, like watching two sick people making out. In a way, I gave Cheri01 exactly what she wanted: passing along the name of her website to thousands, and despite the irony, I feel OK about that. I'm willing to accept that she has moved on and his happily sharing letters with someone else now. But I will also hold out hope that she was murdered while writing me back.