psychoexgirlfriend.com

There comes a time in most relationships that one of the two parties wants to end it - and about that time all hell breaks loose. This is a great example of that hell breaking loose.

As the story goes, I dated this older woman for about 8 months. We were pretty serious but had some communication issues. Well, as you'll see, she had no problem communicating her feelings.

Its hard enough getting over someone. When she leaves you in excess of 50 psychotic voicemails, it makes it even harder. So, lets have some fun getting over her by starting a web site. I hope you enjoy my personal pain as much as my friends have.

-Mark

Psycho Ex is a new website which has been set up as a memorial to the demise of the relationship between Mark, the site owner and the older woman he dated for a short time. After they broke up she plagued him with phone calls and answering machine messages.

Mark has, for our amusement, saved 53 of these messages on his website. They vary from the creepy to the ludicrous. In one message, she's crying hysterically saying, "I'm going to the hospital...fuck you...I'm going to the hospital". In the next message, she's back as vicious and nasty as ever, saying, "I'm not going to kill myself over someone like you."

There's also a hilarious sequence of messages where she berates him for dumping her just after she'd bought a mobile phone. She can't figure it out and reckons that it's all his fault, because she only bought it because he had promised to help her out. So there are two two and a half minute messages where she balls him out for making her spend $200 on the AT&T Customer Careline trying to get her voicemail working. Love is blind, not to mention deaf, dumb and retarded

Having lived through something like this, I identified with all of it. The constant calls, where everything in the other persons life is all your fault, where they expect you to come back because they can't tie their shoelaces without you, are all real.

But is the site itself real? An article in Salon.com theorizes that the whole site is a gigantic marketing hoax. One of the main factors is that the url - http://www.psychoexgirlfriend.com - was registered on February 15th, before many of the messages were actually recorded.

Also, while the website has a very basic, homemade, animated GIF-ey feel, some of the pop-up advertising is extremely sophisticated, and call all be tracked back to a company called L90.

Which, if true, is pretty messed up. As Salon say : "Hoax or not, there's at least one conclusion to be drawn: Is there anything more psycho than an Internet ad company desperate to bring more eyeballs to its clients?"

Fake Fake Fake!

At first, I thought it was real enough. Then I listened to all of the voicemail messages. While listening to one later in the series, I heard an obvious discrepancy in the echo variation. This affected the caller's voice in such a subtle way, I couldn't miss it.

That's when I began to suspect something.

I continued to listen, and found several sections of calls that were identical to sections of other calls - the caller even says the exact same things. What does this mean?

It means, this guy literally "Cut and Pasted" a bunch of these calls together from snippets of maybe ten calls at best. (The robot "time-stamp" voice is easily faked.)

As soon as I heard the most obvious example of this, I started screaming "hoax". Then I took a closer look at the website itself.

If you look on the main page, the site was launched on March 20. A scant two days later, he opens a web store with T-Shirts, Mugs, and mousepads. He also starts complaining about bandwidth costing a lot of money, and offers "suggestions" on how you can help; "BUY MY STUFF!"

Three days after the site is launched, the webmaster claims "The end is near", and tells the visitors that the site will come down if he doesn't get cash flow. He then tells the user that he needs either advertisements, or more product purchases.

5 days after the site's launch, he opens a 4th web store with lots of new products. Doesn't it seem odd that at the same time bandwidth is such a costly problem, he can crank out lots of new products and open another web store?

And now, while the front page is tame, the voicemail download page is absolutely loaded with ads of every kind: 4 banner ads at the top, and an uncountable amount of pop-up ads.

I'm sorry, but this is a business scam hoax in the worst way.

---

Update: littlerubberfeet says re psychoexgirlfriend.com: this website could not be found...guess its over

So yeah. A failed business scam hoax. Ha.

I expected this site to become (sort of) cult. It has all the fascination of voyeurism (cf. Big Brother or Survivor). It's basically a step by step account of a woman's initial recovery from the end of her relationship.

If we were to just pretend that this site wasn't a fake for a moment, here are some things I have noticed about it.

• The messages start off desperate. This woman is really upset by the breakup!
• She then goes through phases of mad and almost calm.
• We find out that Mark has been calling her back and talking to her, but we don't know what he's said.
• In the womans "calm" messages, she has trouble not blurting out what she is actually feeling and slips up in her façade by repeating some key words and emphasizing some of them.
• We know that we aren't getting the whole story because the woman starts complaining about some of the things he's said. If you ignore the stuff about not liking her anymore then you still have the stuff about him telling her off for going out. It isn't clear if this has been said before or after the breakup though.
• She tries to force Mark to call her by accusing him of stealing and threatens to call the police. Sounds funny, and he obviously calls her bluff since she calls back and tell him never mind and don't try anything.
• She tries to make him feel sorry for her by telling him that her father might be dying of prostate cancer, but we don't hear much about that.
• The last 3 MP3s are in reverse order. If played in that order, then it sounds like she (once again) tells him that she will not call again but starts harassing him again. If you play them them in the order of the time stamps then the last one is where she tells him (calmy, as a matter of fact) that she will wait for him to call. "Goodbye"

A clear indication that we have only heard one side of the story, and probably won't ever here the other! Take this with a pinch of salt!

Update 03/03/03
It seems that this website has gone tits up. I will once again sit on the fence and only say the truth is out there, but it's likely we'll never find it out.