hi
Just imagine if you opened this blog one day, and saw nothing but that on the page. Or if you’re a subscriber, and you opened your daily email from me to see nothing but that. Or if you follow me on Twitter, and I sent out a tweet containing nothing else but those two pathetic letters, followed by…nothing. No other explanatory tweet, nothing at all. Just “Hi”. Or “Hello”. Now imagine if you didn’t know who I was, and you just got a random email or text or phone call from some strange person you know nothing about, with nothing else to go on. Just “Hi”. How would you respond?
Sex workers deal with this maddening waste of time every day. A phone call, text, email, private message or whatever through the number, address or account one uses for work, with nothing else to break up the vast sea of white space but those two idiotic letters (or five, or a few words & letters like “how R U doing”, usually without punctuation and often without capitalization). Guys, we get that y’all are on average less verbal than women, really we do. We don’t expect love letters or long introductory epistles. But y’all need to give us something to work with. I mean, is it so hard to type, “Hi, I’m John Smith; I saw your ad on Eros and I’d like to know if you could see me next Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon”? I mean, if you were calling a doctor’s office or an auto parts store or a pizza delivery place, would you respond to their initial salutation with “hi” and then dead silence? What are we supposed to do with that? How would you feel if the lady simply responded with the same blah nothing? Because I’ve tried that, and you know what usually happens? Nothing. I get the dreaded “hi” and respond back in kind, and then…nothing. At all. Ever. Because clearly the “hi” guys can’t think of how to respond to such a nothing either…so what do they expect us to do with it? I’ve tried responding by going straight to business: “Hi, are you calling about one of my ads?” or the like, and you know what I often get back? Oh go on, guess. That’s right: nothing.
The other day a dude called, opening with “Hi, is this Maggie?” No problem there; I replied with “Yes it is; what’s your name?” He answered, then mumbled something I couldn’t make out at all. When I said, “excuse me?” He returned with “What?” and when I clarified that I couldn’t make out his previous sentence, he said clearly “I must have the wrong number” and hung up abruptly. What the fuck? What was even the point of that? Was it specifically intended to annoy me and waste my time? Because I honestly can’t think of another goal such an interaction could be reasonably expected to accomplish. Please, guys, you don’t need to be Shakespeare. But if you’re not even able to introduce yourself and provide the most rudimentary hook for us to hang a conversation on, what the hell do you think that tells us about what you’d be like as a client?
