But, but, how come it's got to be a lady? I don't understand why that would matter. Unless this guy is some kind of sleazeball-

Oh right, that's it. Sleazeball.

Is that your remote control sliding around the sheets or are you happy to see me?

Because it's definitely the price that's the determining factor in this situation.

FLAGGED. I almost want to e-mail him and be like "WTH Dude?!?"

"I have to warn you pretty lady: I may accidentally hump you at some point. Probably in my sleep. Sorry in advance for that."

Although it does comfort me that someone stupid enough to post "I have a lot of possessions" could probably be tricked then robbed.

Let's rob him in retaliation for being a sleaze.

pup, what ever happened with him and Olena?

From: Olena
To: Billy
Date: Mar 29, 2007 1:50 PM
Subject It is about the CraigsList house! Again!

Mr Billy!!! Hi you! This is Olena! Yes! LOL!!! :) :) :) :)

Mr Billy for the week now I am sad because I think you find other American Lady for the stay with you! But now in this minute I am HAPPY!!! It is on the Craigs List! Again!!!! Yes! It is true! This is Olena!

Mr Billy can you not like me still?? :( I will tell you the secret! And than you will like me! Yes!!!

On here is the secret!

Now you guess it!!!! LOL!!! OK! You can not guess it! It is OK!!

Mr Billy I now have the other Leg!!!!! YES! It is arrive in box in Saturday. The Fed Ex bring it to me!! And now I can wear it! LOL!

But Mr Billy I now have problem. It is Iryna. Can you remember Iryna?? I am live with the couch of Iryna now! She is problem! On here is the story. When I sleep (in the couch!) Iryna make a laugh on me. She take my new leg and she write in it! With the ink!! She write in it "For the good time call Olena." And the ink can not get off of it! Yes! It is not OK! I call the company for the leg and ask them if they have other leg for me. But it will not come in box until 6 weeks!!!!

:( :( <--- (This is a sad. For the leg!)

But Mr Billy! I am have only one legs after the November. Now I am have two legs but one of it has the ink! But in the 6 weeks I am have THREE LEGS!! It is very pretty much better!!! So it is OK!

Also! I will tell you the happy news!! Yes!

Mr Billy I am now have a bunny. Her name is Bunny and she look like the rabbit!! With the ears! LOL! Bunny is love to me now because I am not have Doggy. Now Ronnie have Doggie. Now Bunny is my Doggy! LOL! But when Iryna is in home, I am to hide Bunny. Because if Iryna know the Bunny she will give it to Ronnie for the Drug. So when Iryna is in home I keep Bunny in the bag. It is under the very couch!! LOL! On here is a picture of what Bunny is looking like! LOL!

Can you like the bunny?

Mr Billy are you have other American Lady for the stay with you?? It can be Olena! Yes! LOL!!

Now you answer and I wait!

This was Olena. Yes! OK! LOL!!!

Previously: 1, 2, 3.

These Billy threads with the emails from Olena are my favorites recently.

I'd say you could crash on the couch but I have a guest who is already doing that for a couple weeks then will be leaving.

I think a couple is breaking up, and the exiting partner (sleeping on the couch) wrote the ad to have the ex robbed.

Awesome.

The Olena files are genius! Mudpuppie, it's good that you're not using your powers for evil, but we should probably lock you up anyway, just to play it safe.

That doesn't make any sense, Feisty. How could an ad written by a third party result in him getting robbed? If a strage woman showed up on your doorstep saying she'd answered a mysterious ad, would you invite her in?

Nope, it's the guy's ad, and he's one creepy-ass motherfucker.

Good, it's gone!

If a strage woman showed up on your doorstep saying she'd answered a mysterious ad, would you invite her in?

I don't know, is she cute?

mudpuppie, remind me to tell you the story of OLGA.... from MINSK one of these days. In person, preferably over a beer or three.

By the way, your arugula seeds are werry wigorous. They are all sprouted already. No sign of Sor'El son of Jor'El or the garlic chives.

Was it really necessary to trot out Billy for a fourth run over the coals? Sure he seems sleazy, and the addition of the cheesey bubble-blowing pic justifiably earned him a sarcastic blip on the blogosphere's radar.

But, all I really know about this guy is this ad and some myspace quote of him claiming to be a swinger of some renown (ok, add some extra sleaze cheese) so I can't really say for certain he's an asshole. I have no evidence he's committed a crime and I can think of plenty of sleazy people that I admire despite the skeevies, some of them even because of it.

And, c'mon, it's Craigs List. There's a dozen stupid, sleazy ads posted everyday and that's part of its charm. At least on the DC board, maybe it's different in Portland. Many of you who seem to enjoy this most are Portland bunnies, so maybe there's a protecting home turf thing going on. Well, I don't know what's going on, but I just didn't think repeatedly bad-mouthing other denizens of the internet was the MetaChat way.

I don't think mudpuppie is raking him over the coals, it doesn't even seem like making fun of the guy. It's more just a launching point for creative writing. Olena should expand her contacts to include other sleazy craigslist guys.

Dano, at what point does it become okay for him to continually post this bogus scam? He's blatantly trying to trick women into sleeping with him. Because we know that he's posted the same ad 5 times in the past week, we can be somewhat comforted in the fact that no one's fallen for it yet. (And if one Googles right, one will discover that it's not a new ad. He's been trying this for quite some time.)

I don't think this counts as "raking over the coals." "Raking over the coals" would be taking it REALLY public and repeatedly posting "Look, fuckhead, do you think women are stupid or desparate enough to want to sleep next to your sorry ass?" That would be "raking over the coals."

And, I'll be honest. I've sent him those emails too. Because I think he deserves it. But I haven't posted them here, because, IMO, that discussion is between him and me. But he's too chickenshit to even respond, so it's moot.

At this point, the Olena stuff just serves to say "Look, it doesn't go unnoticed that you repeatedly keep posting these ads even after they're pulled down. You're being watched." And yeah, in the meantime, those of us who see him for the shitbag he is can laugh at him. That's the bonus. Because, again, to many of us, he deserves it.

I don't see a single thing wrong with that. I'm betting that most people don't. If you don't want to laugh at him, or if you feel sorry for him, that's fine. Seriously. If you think it's something you'd rather not see happen, I respect that. And I totally respect your right to completely avoid the threads. But please respect that what he's doing is totally pugnacious to a lot of people here. Dangerous, even. Because there's a chance that someone could fall for it.

Do I feel bad about spoofing him? Yes. But only in the sense that I wish there was more I could do than sending bogus emails to him. 'Cause the guy's a fucking danger. He's trying to prey on women. And one of these days, if he keeps posting at the rate he's been posting, some woman is going to fall for it. And god help her, that would be one stupid woman. But that doesn't mean she deserves it.

The subtext of the Olena emails, as outlandish as they are, is meant to be "Dude, seriously?"

The emails I've sent to him privately and with my regular email address have no subtext. They're quite straightforward.

Since he hasn't answered either and he keeps on posting, I don't feel the slightest bit of shame for continuing the spoof.

He's not the kind of Craigslist fuckhead who calls and says he's going to come pick up your couch, then doesn't. He's an entirely different kind of CL fuckhead. He gets no sympathy from me.

Word, pups. Word.

I don't see a single thing wrong with that. I'm betting that most people don't. If you don't want to laugh at him, or if you feel sorry for him, that's fine.

And I'm betting there a lot of people here who are uncomfortable with you bringing this guy up for mockery yet again, but haven't said anything before because, like me, they appreciate of the craftsmanship of the Olena emails and in a different context they could be really funny. And because he does seem rather slimy and not worth getting into a fight about.

But four posts in a week is GYOFB territory, no matter the subject, especially if the "update" is some guy posted the same ad he did last week except he cut the price. And, yeah, on a basic level I don't understand what's so bad about the ad. People room together. People fuck. Sometimes people work out a deal where they can room together and fuck. What's the big deal? Is there an assumption of a rape occurring that I'm missing?

As far as "raking over the coals". Isn't the whole point of this thread so that bunnies can say what a creep he is? Again. It's a sort of punishment by simply existing, and I don't like the idea of internet vigilantism being a regular feature at MetaChat.

And I totally respect your right to completely avoid the threads.

Gee, magnanimous of you. I totally respect your right to let me say my piece and ignore me too.

Is there an assumption of a rape occurring that I'm missing?

Ya think? Maybe not rape, but certainly coerced sex. "You're too poor to have any right to your own body" sounds like the message he's sending to me.

Also, women trying to find roommate situations is hard enough as it is; you have no fucking clue who's going to answer the door when you ring the bell, or what his expectations are. As a woman, you have to think about whether people know where you are and when you're expected back, or whether you should bring a friend with you so you don't look so vulnerable. This guy posting this shit subtly influences people to think "Female roommate = sex partner," which is not what I would want a guy thinking if I were ringing the doorbell to look at his apartment. Or what I would want a landlord thinking when he showed me a place.

Because even if I were composed enough, and had enough options and resources, to decline to live with someone like that, who the hell knows what's going to happen when he shuts and locks the door behind me, and takes me to show me the bedroom.

This kind of shit doesn't help. Defending this kind of shit doesn't help. It's a fucked-up mindset that encourages other fucked-up mindsets that do, in the end, harm women, even if only by making us scared to interact with men.

Defending this kind of shit doesn't help.

So I'm harming women by expressing discomfort with seeing this here again?

And next Billy thread on MetaChat is gonna help how?

No, I just don't understand your motivation for defending him. Where's the discomfort coming from? You're expressing it as a wish to protect this particular individual from ridicule, as if his feelings and needs are more important than the women he's trying to get to pay him for sex. Which is exactly the attitude that cultivates the mindset in the first place, that men's needs are more important than women's, that men "must" trick women into sleeping with them, that boys will be boys.

If it's a larger issue of not wanting to see any mean-spirited things on MeCha, that's a different argument, but it doesn't seem to be the one you've been making, because you keep saying "This particular guy is not a big deal." And when people say, "Yeah, he kinda is," you argue against it.

If it's just that you don't find this particular thing funny, and you're not trying to make a larger argument, then it does seem like, "Well, don't read the threads" is the answer.

I think part of me just died from laughing too hard. Mudpuppie, that was stellar. Wow. I'm without the proper words.

I just didn't think repeatedly bad-mouthing other denizens of the internet was the MetaChat way.

I don't like the idea of internet vigilantism being a regular feature at MetaChat.

And next Billy thread on MetaChat is gonna help how?

How much more explicit do I have to be? Yes, I don't think this is appropriate for the site, at least not in repeated threads. Additionally, I'm kinda meh on the outrage about the ad. Furthermore that Olena is some pretty funny shit. But, primarily, it's just not what I thought MetaChat was about.

One thing that neither Quentin (in the last thread) nor I have argued for is any kind of moral relativism between what Billy is doing and what mudpuppie is doing. Your last comment in the previous thread confused me a bit.

My last comment was basically that the guy is severely fucked up, and is trying to exploit women who don't have enough money for their own place, and I'm having a hard time understanding why you're defending him.

And half the threads on MeCha are making fun of things found on the internet. The only ones I regularly see you objecting to are those in which people are making fun of misogynist attitudes posted on the internet.

Which doesn't mean that I think you're a misogynist, just that I keep seeing you getting annoyed when others are discussing sexism or crappy treatment of women. But I don't see you popping up in the "We don't rent to gay couples" thread, saying that that's not a big deal and we shouldn't be making fun of Southerners on the internet. Or in the pedophile/weirdo psychiatrist thread to say that it's cruel to be making fun of that guy on MeCha. Or telling people to lay off Adam Gopnik and be nicer when criticizing his writing.

Which is fine; you're not required to be interested in every thread that gets posted. But it starts seeming weird that you continually pop up to defend strangers against any charges of sexism, and to tell us all that we're overreacting in that one particular area.

Not "weird" in the sense of "Ah ha! Now I've got you! You're obviously a chauvinist!" Just weird in a "Why the hell does he care so much? Why would he put so much effort into defending these people?" sort of way.

I assume you interact with most of us because you find us reasonably intelligent people. Yet any time discussions of sexism come up, you tell us we're being unreasonable. So, either we're stupid in this area, in which case it's silly to keep arguing with us; or you don't really get it. You're not required to get it, of course, and not getting it doesn't make you an evil woman-hater. But continually telling us to stop talking about the subject because you don't get it and therefore don't think it's a big deal is starting to seem like it's betraying a lack of respect or intellectual curiosity or something, in that you're either choosing to bang your head against a wall by interacting with stupid people or you're refusing to make an attempt to learn why people you respect have priorities and opinions that are different from yours and to accept that maybe, in this area, your not getting it doesn't make us wrong, or at least doesn't make the conversation about it worthless.

It very well could be that you *are* making these same points -- about respect, about not judging people, about being nice -- on other subjects and I'm just missing them. But since I only see you in these particular threads, it tends to come across less as "Let's be nice" than "Stop being hysterical, you feeble-minded women."

You know, thinking on it more, I think part of it is that you often seem willing to disbelieve or dismiss the opinions and feelings of people actually on the site, in favor of the feelings of random people not on the site. So, this dude or the newspaper journalist who wrote the silly article on the Celtic Women or whoever. And it's hard for me not to read that as really off-putting, because it seems that if you're in a group of people, you should be most concerned with those particular people's feelings and concerns.

So, I don't know, maybe you're using concern for these random people as a proxy for your own feelings, and I'm reading you wrong. But it often does seem, at least to me, that you're willing to throw me and some of the other female members under the bus in favor of strangers, and it's not always clear why.

All I said in the Celtic Women thread was that the catfight question didn't seem like a big deal to me. For holding that opinion, I was compared to a segregationist.

True, what I said there was somewhat similar to some of what I've said here, but I wasn't asking anyone to stop doing anything. There was nothing about the "good of the site" in what I said. It was just my reaction to the link. Go ahead, re-read what I actually posted and show me where I said "stop making fun of misogynist attitudes".

And even if I had said the same thing in that thread, that's two cases of the hundreds of threads I've commented in. You've built this elaborate theory of me throwing "female members under the bus in favor of strangers" based on those two threads? I write "let's be nice" and you read it as "stop being hysterical, you feeble-minded women."? You make detailed notes about threads I have and have not commented on and then say I'm acting weird? (By the way, you didn't seem to notice that I barely commented in the first two Billy threads.)

I'm not sure what I can do in such an environment, but I can certainly tell I'm not wanted in it.

I understand this is the place to come if you have an axe in need of grinding. How much will it cost me to get my axe sharpened here, as compared with some other threads on the Internet, which I am also pricing?

"I don't see what the big deal is" seems designed to shut down conversation. Deciding that anyone disagreeing with you is accusing you of being at the exact opposite end of the continuum (racist, sexist, whatever) seems designed to shut down conversation. And yes, as I said, in every thread I've been in with you where you've started complaining that the topic of conversation is not a big deal, and complaining that anyone who responds back with "yes, it is" is therefore accusing you of being a heartless blank-ist, it's been in a thread about women's issues.

As I said, you may very well be doing the same thing in other threads, about other issues. But I'm here a lot, I'm certainly active in a lot of the threads about women's issues, and yes, it does seem to be a pattern over the past year or so, if my memory's good.

Didn't you and I just do this last summer? We've done this many times. I'm really not just inventing this shit out of thin air.

Again, I'm not trying to attack you, or say you shouldn't be here. Just that it doesn't feel like your defense of this guy because what's going on "isn't appropriate for this site" seems hollow, because I don't see you making the same case in any of the other instances in which site members have similarly mocked random people on the internet, or in our lives. And it's hard not to start feeling like you see "mudpuppie" or "Miko" or "occhiblu" and immediately start reading all sorts of evil intents into what we're saying, or automatically dismissing us as over the top.

I don't want you to go away at all. I just would like to be able to have a conversation that doesn't turn into a huge offense/defense thing. And I would love for you to be part of that conversation, without having to constantly reassure you that I don't think you're sexist, and without your continually telling me that I'm stupid / hysterical / whatever for being bothered by things that bother me.

And I should note I'm not trying to speak for Miko or mudpuppie, just making an observation about what I've personally seen and felt.

Didn't you and I just do this last summer?

Sure, and I promised to be less snarky in my comments. I feel I've kept my end of the bargain. It doesn't seem to matter. See ya around.