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Inspired by Scam

Found this little gem via Mefi - a blog that reads like very well-written short story, but this is not exactly fiction unless you count email exchanges with a Craigslist spammer real. You have to read the blog in its entirety to savor this adventure but the tag line tells it in brief :

My 45-day quest to convince a craigslist scammer to write me a poem-- and how she lost her mind and tried to become my friend

I found it interesting to see the person emerge from inside the scammer, the lies, distortions give way to poetry even if plagiarised. There is a corn field of opportunity out there for anyone with literary aspirations these days all from the comfort of their couch. Todays writers don't need to fight wars and live to tell about it, or relocate to the South Pacific to create a volume of stories set there. They don't even need to hang out at the bar and listen to streams of consciousness pour out of dead beat drunks. Replying to emails from scammers and other strangers hanging around in cyberspace is rich with opportunity as this blog proves. All you need is an the imagination to create something worth reading with all this material.

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