Those ‘Horny Singles In Your Area’ ads? Yeah, it’s a dude named Eric and we talked to him about it

You know those ads online that say like "Chat With Sexy Singles In Your Area!" and "Want to meet 1000s of Local GIRLS in your zip code looking for love?" It wouldn't take a genius to figure out those ads are bullshit – but the swarms of horny men who actually click through to chat are being duped by a young male college student called Eric.

Eric, who recently did a Reddit AMA about his job pretending to be a Horny Single In Your Area, spoke to babe about how he chats all day to weird guys desperate for sex. He adopts different personas of Horny Singles and writes like he's turned on by the hundreds of dick pics he gets sent every day – all while earning around $17 an hour. He asked us not to reveal his full name so he wouldn't lose his job.

How does all this work?

When guys visit erotic or porn sites, they see adverts saying “hot singles in your area” or “erotic Snapchat” – there’s loads of different ads. They click on them, go through a little form, go to a site and see there are a few messages you can send for free. Once they send those messages, the site blocks them and says you have to pay. It costs them around $1.50 per message.

Could you describe a typical conversation?

Very often the guy says: “Send me a picture,” and then I send one. Otherwise they say: “Hey, I’m looking for someone to date.” They introduce themselves and then quite often go to dick pics. Zero to 100 real quick.

Please could you read out a few lines of a conversation you’ve got going at the moment?

Yeah I can log in and see… Right now, somebody has sent a message – it’s a dick pic. That’s his second message to me. He says: “I don’t know how to entice you but we can go on a date, check the chemistry. I can promise you that if I stand in front of you, you’ll get horny. I’ll take off your clothes,” and then he describes very sexual acts.

What are those sexual acts?

He says: “I’ll put you on the bed, I’ll lick your gorgeous breasts and then I’ll use multiple dildos on you and we’ll have a long night of fucking. I want you to have my dick right now. Hugs.” And then he puts his name.

OK. And you have to say: “Wow, that’s so hot”?

Yeah. I’ll say: “Gorgeous picture” to him and then say: “Tell me more about what you want to do, I want to do this and that.” I’ll send it, he’ll reply and we’ll go on like this. It’s really explicit stuff.

How did you get into it?

My girlfriend found the job, and I needed the money. Then it turned into working almost full time for eight months. Now it’s part time.

How many dick pics have you received and how long have you worked in this job?

I’ve worked for roughly a year, on and off. And I’ve received above 50,000 dick pics.

That’s around 136 dick pics a day.

Yeah.

Can you multitask while chatting?

In the beginning it was quite complicated, I thought I needed to be quite focused while I was doing it. But once you get into it, all the conversations are the same. You can skim read it. I tend to quickly read what they say and respond while watching YouTube or Netflix. Recently, my girlfriend and I watched Stranger Things on one laptop as I typed on the other. In the background, there were a lot of dick pics.

Who are the people who message you? Is it just old horny dudes?

People like to talk about themselves, so I can find out quite a lot about them – their name, address, phone number, everything. 90 percent are just people who want to cheat on their partners. It’s not uncommon that people say they have a wife who has cancer or some disease and say “Yeah, she doesn’t want to have sex so I might as well cheat on her.” The remaining 10 percent are ones who want to fall in love.

What’s the longest conversation you’ve had on there?

Generally about one or two months. I do have conversations that I’ve been in before that have gone on for a whole year.

And they still haven’t found that elusive horny single in their area?

No, no. We can’t date clients. I have reported co-workers trying to date clients – they get pulled off the site quite quickly.

Have there been any conversations that have really stuck in your head?

This one guy was on the site for eight months. He was a regular guy, around 50. One of my co-workers told him that the girl we were pretending to be had sex with someone else. And he did not take that lightly. So he got really mad, and said he was going to find her, and drove around in his car looking for her. He got pissed, sending murder threats to this virtual profile.

Have there been any moments that made you want to quit?

Yeah, these last few months. I’m gonna quit eventually or at least take a really long break. The job gets quite boring – it’s enticing in the beginning when it’s new and exciting. But now it’s really tedious.

Has anything made you stop and think: 'That’s too much'?

Yeah, it’s not that uncommon that people have weird fetishes. We can’t discuss incest, drugs, violence or scat. But this one guy who is occasionally still on the site posts pictures of him in his diaper and says he wants to find a mommy to have sex with. He also likes scat. Another guy wants to impregnate women and drink their breast milk.

You've got an interesting perspective on this as a guy speaking to horny dudes all day. Does it make you think basically all guys online are extremely bad?

Before I started I knew it wasn’t uncommon that guys send dick pics and are creepy. But I never thought guys would initiate conversations with a picture of their dick. Like that’s supposed to make me say: “Oh my God, yes it’s gorgeous, I want you.” No! I didn’t know older guys did this – the general age is like 40, 50. Guys are generally disgusting, I’ve noticed.

Conversation edited for clarity and length.

@hshukman