Dear Lonely Man on the Internet

How could I possibly resist your invitation to burn minutes of my precious life trying to say ‘No’ politely?

Dear Lonely Man on the Internet,

Thank you for sliding into my DMs. It’s gratifying to be singled out by you as one of dozens of women you’ll be approaching this week with your vacuous offer of “friendship”. We’ll call it that for now because I want to respect you as a human being, even though you’re about to make that difficult. 

With your inspired opening, “Hi. How are you today?” you make me feel so special. Almost as if we know each other; like you’re an old friend and care about me, and not at all that you’re a horny male who saw my profile pic and thought you’d give it a try.

It’s really sweet that you “think we have a lot in common”, especially when you haven’t wasted a second of your important man-time reading my posts. It is endearing, almost child-like, that when I ask what exactly you think we have in common, you scroll quickly through my feed and answer, “You like cooking” on the basis that I posted a picture of my $20 breakfast while I was in New Orleans delivering a confere…