The Troll War in 2020: Misinformation At Home But Mostly Abroad (Part 7)

7. Plenty of Fish Or Plenty Of Trolls? 

Just when I thought I'd seen enough of these trolls and was wrapping up the last of my 48 hours, I received a message from a female on a dating app I frequent called Plenty of Fish because, well, I'm a single male, alright?!? This lady looked nice, a 41-year old travel nurse from Salt Lake City. Three soild pictures of a pretty, unassuming blonde who was a few years younger than me who had good taste in music, the arts and was physically active and socially responsible. She was hiking in one, biking in another and smiling in her last. 

Home run, right? The first few messages were good. But, after the fourth message I noticed odd things. First, she started asking me extremely personal questions, such as how long I've been living at my current address, how long I've had Covid-19 for--because I list being a survivor on my profile--and what my parents names were. The last part was a huge red flag. Also, her grammar was seriously hit-or-miss. Now I've known a few Canadians in my time, and my mom is one, but I've never known anyone to miss as badly as this lady on simple English words and prepositions. For someone with a masters degree who supposedly travels the world attending to sick people, something wasn't adding up. 

So, I started asking her questions. It turned out her name was Tarah, and she said she hailed from a small town in British Columbia, Canada who was currently on assignment in Limerick, Ireland but was based in Salt Lake City. But, when I looked her family up on several journalistic Web sites I use for research purposes, ahem, ahem, I couldn't find one person in that town by the last name she provided. That was strike one. And when I asked her where she worked, she said she couldn't disclose that for personal reasons. Steeerike Twoooo! 

Now, I'm a pretty easygoing guy so I figured I have all this free time on my hands what with this insipid virus and all the attendant symptoms. Why not continue the charade? After about a day of small talk though, she started getting irritated by little things. "Well, are we going to talk about you or not?" the troll opined. "You not listening me!" 

The troll, I mean, potential hot date from up north, offered to have me contact her on Facebook Messenger--but she didn't have a Facebook account. I had to enter some strange code just to reach her on Messenger and it took several attempts because the instructions she provided were in broken English. For most that would be strike three and you're out for sure. But, for little 'ol me I figured, hey, let's see where this journey takes us two lovebirds. 

If you thought the chatter on Plenty of Fish got strange though, dear Lord almighty. I'll just post the conversations below to give you an idea on what in the world was going on here. After about two hours of this noise, I just got fed up keeping up the charade and so, like any investigative journalist who had already done some serious digging--I took her out to dinner like James Bond would, wining and dining her under a moonlit summer's night in Bora Bora. (Sadly, I did nothing of the sort from my living room recliner's vantage point.) 

Her response to my inquiry was, well, surprising. "And what feelings do you hold against Chinese and Russian spy?" the troll asked. I made my statement about being a journalist working on a story on misinformation, which would obviously end the charade. That part gave me back the power I'd lost early on, but it certainly took me back to where this all started--when I was being trolled and then catalogued by an intelligence official on Bloomberg QuickTime, having had all my recent posts wiped. Is this the kind of fight we're up against? If we are, then we'd better know our enemies--no matter where they're from and in whatever medium, because they are literally everywhere.