Welcome to Ask Poppy! I’m Poppy, your go-to girl for all of life’s woes. And when I say ALL, I MEAN IT. I’m not an expert on anything except maybe for being me, which makes me totally qualified to do this.
Hey Poppy,
So, I’ve been dating this girl online―let’s call her “Jen”―for about six months now. We met on Tinder and I found her really pretty. Then we started talking and we share a lot of interests like art and movies.
During those six months, we never saw each other in person until last week. Before that, she would only send me selfies but we never Skyped or FaceTimed. So I guessed that the selfies would be proof enough that she’s real.
Anyway, we decided to finally meet last week at a café. I was so excited to see this pretty girl but she was nervous that I might not like her. I ensured her that I would accept everything about her once we finally see each other. When I got there, I waited for almost 30 minutes, almost giving up since I thought she’d set me up.
Until…a guy showed up and sat in front of me.
Confused, I asked who he was. “I’m Jen,” he told me. I became even more perplexed and told him to stop joking around. But he really insisted and explained that he’s been catfishing me this whole time because he found me attractive.
I ask about the selfies and he said that he was stealing his sister’s photos. I know, pretty messed up. He says he was scared that no guy would like him if he used his photo on social media accounts.
Long story short, I got mad at him for lying to me and pretending to be a girl, and I left the café. He continues to send me messages using “Jen’s” account and I keep ignoring it. His last message was “Can we be friends?”
What should I do? Should I be friends with him or do I turn him away for lying to me?
―Fred
Hello, Fred!
Sweetie, you did not deserve that. Malcolm X once said that betrayal was hella worse than death. The moment one is born, you’re bound to die and that sh*t will happen no matter what. However, you can never really see an act of betrayal even if it’s staring you right in the face.
More than 40 years ago, the Internet was invented. Like any other good thing in the world, it came to fruition to make our lives a whole lot better. The U.S. Department of Defense created the Internet to make the transferring of files a whole lot easier. At first, there were like two or three computers connected to it, disseminating information, transferring knowledge that can actually help achieve good in mankind. These days, the Internet is pretty much sh*t. It helped elect a racist pig in the US and now we’re stuck with a piece of asshole for the next six years. If Dante were to revisit his journey, I’m pretty sure all nine circles of hell will be filled with greedy influencers, political trolls, and all your basura friends that you have met on Tumblr.
It must be quite scary for you to have been Catfish-ed. I mean, dude the documentary is out there. I’m not 100 percent sure that the documentary is true because it’s just too f*cking slick and based on the way it was presented, it was truly unreal, but I know that it happens in real life and super minalas ka lang that it happened to you.
People think they’re soooo f*cking clever, that their lies will never come to surface, but a lie is a lie is a lie—you cannot run away from it and the biggest lies will haunt you forever. Just look at the end of Catfish, and the ending of every episode of Catfish that aired on MTV.
Should you be friends with him? I would say no. To begin with, he’s not even a friend. He was just someone you trusted because you let your guard down, you were thinking with your dick and not with your kukote. I’m not gonna push your katangahan ng hard, but know that in The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins wrote: “For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” I am so not going to blame you for trusting someone that you met on Tinder, but my god, you really should have at least Skyped before you guys met up. Or perhaps do a reverse search on Google Images? Like, it’s super easy to catch someone’s lies online—there are receipts everywhere. Use those receipts to catch those deceits, bro.
You can never be friends with someone who had betrayed you completely. As I’m typing this, I’m sitting on a lonely spot in this airport smoking lounge, drinking my Pale Pilsen and thinking of how beautiful it must be to see Sigur Rós in a couple of days. You see, I have betrayed and have been betrayed. There’s no other way to describe it, but my betrayal gave birth to a betrayal which is a betrayal in itself. This is the sort of things we do to the people we love and as much as we’re aware that it will all end in tears, we still did it.
For you to have been betrayed by a complete stranger, I get it, it’s tough. But when it’s your friends doing it to you, you’re just super f*cking ready to raise hell. You’re ready to fight. And it’s especially frustrating when someone keeps on living their lies. Like, how about “Jen” who is still insisting for you to be friends? How about my ex-friend who has built up his own ivory tower of lies that I intend to topple when I get back from my trip?
Like, I guess we’re all just human. That we commit these grave mistakes and we learn to live with it, but some things are just not forgivable. Some people just need to be punched in the f*cking face. Jen is probably one of them, but that’s only if he continues to bombard you with his lies and faux friendship. I mean do not avail of that bullsh*t, Fred. If you need bullshit, you can always rely on the government to give you exactly that naman, eh.
Some betrayals are forgivable, especially when the parties involved have communicated their mistakes with the ones betrayed. Or like if you really know a person, and you love them dearly, and you know deep inside of you that there’s just no other way but to continue to give love and receive it. But then there’s betrayals like people maintaining their innocence despite fully knowing that their lies had already ruined lives. There’s using your sister’s photos to attract someone else because you can’t face your own demons. There’s faking everything and then still feeling that you still have a shot even though you’re the biggest douche in the entire universe.
To that, I say f*ck you, Jen. You’re a liar, Jen. You used your sister’s photo and reeled in an innocent person to join you in your life of lies. You manipulated someone into believing that you can be trusted, and then you f*cked up completely, and now you’re hiding behind your sh*tty fake account acting as if NOTHING HAPPENED AT ALL. Hey, Jen, know that one day you will wake up and there will be no one beside you, because your whole existence is a lie. Because you continue to harass others, acting as if you want to be their friend but then you want something else completely. You prey on people’s weaknesses and use them to create sympathy and then you ruin them and the people around them.
Jen does not deserve your friendship, Fred. What you deserve is someone who is truthful. Someone who will reveal herself to you completely. Someone you can understand and depend on. And if that someone betrayed you, yet you still felt like she means the world to you, then don’t let go. Because sure, you will be betrayed and you will betray, it’s just a matter of finding that someone who will still be truthful despite the cunning lies.
You will find that someone. But maybe next time, Facetime her first. And if she refuses, it’s easy to say no. Find something substantial than a couple of face pictures.
Always,
Poppy
Got a question for Poppy? From love and relationships to weird questions you dare not ask even your psychologist, Poppy is ready to answer them all. Send in your questions to ask.poppy@yahoo.com or post your question over Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #AskPoppy, and you just might get the answer you are looking for.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in her private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of Preen.ph, or any other entity of the Inquirer Group of Companies.
Art by Dorothy Guya
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