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Fake Skype/Lang8 Friends? | ||
Tags: False friends | Skype | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 11 24 February 2015 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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One of my Lang8 friends on Skype said a couple of things that bother me, and started me wondering if this person might not be legit, and I was wondering if there were some way I could see if this person were in fact who they said they were?
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7191 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 11 24 February 2015 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes it's safest and best to trust your gut.
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| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3975 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 11 24 February 2015 at 7:29am | IP Logged | ||
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That he doesn't have the language skills that you thought he did or just that he's pretending to be more than he is?
One of my favorite people with Spanish was a doctor who turned out to actually work in a convenience store. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 4 of 11 24 February 2015 at 8:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I dunno, I'm not really all that trusting a person, and that is all it could be, it could just be that I was expecting something completely different. The feeling I got from our first chat was, it just felt a little weird, people at my work place tend to try to get me into a conversation to say something really bad, trick me into doing things, and it kind of felt like that, I do not know how else to describe it. Mostly he was normal though. He kept saying he wasn't nervous, though I could tell he was (That is an entirely normal thing to do.) For now though, This person seems pretty cool to me though otherwise. Thanks for the replies, I'm new at this sort of thing. Anyone ever found someone who just turned out to be a rotten apple?
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4833 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 5 of 11 25 February 2015 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't, but then again, the fear of exactly what you are talking about keeps me from trying to find Skype friends online. I don't have that sort of fear at Lang-8, but when I get friend requests I do take some time to look at their profile and activity, if any, to see if they are legit or up to something devious.
I would agree with luke... trust your gut. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4693 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 11 25 February 2015 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can weed out most scammers pretty fast from the profiles. No pics, obviously fake
pics, awful spelling, hidden ads or sexual advances etc... usually country of origin may also give you an indication. East Asia, North America, Europe are usually fine, so is South America. Africa could be anything, so could the Arab world. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5116 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 11 25 February 2015 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Spammers aside, I suppose like most things, sometimes it takes a while to click with someone. Every one can have an off day, but it usually only takes a couple sessions to realize whether it's going to work or not. When it doesn't work it's never been a problem to move on. Lack of "chemistry" is rarely one-sided. I've had no trouble finding conversation partners for Turkish, for example, but have had absolutely no luck finding a decent Polish conversation partner. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5193 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 11 25 February 2015 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've never had anything dodgy, apart from extremely obvious spam. I used to be a member of LiveMocha and it seemed to be full of spammers and "I've seen your profile and fallen in love" type messages, but on the other sites I use (conversation Exchange, iTalki) the people seem legit. That said, I'm a guy and many women I've spoken to seem to have received messages from people who're not really looking for a language exchange.
I do, however, get a lot of people who're not serious. They send an enthusiastic message or two saying they're very keen to do a language exchange, then never reply again. Or what I call "one-call wonders": we exchange Skype details, have one good and long chat and I have the impression that it went great and we got on very well, then afterwards they ignore all communication and maybe even remove me from Skype. In these cases, you can just never know. As hrhenry says, sometimes it just doesn't work out and you don't "click", and perhaps my impression of it having gone well isn't always shared by the other party. Or maybe they got busy with work/studies/life. Or they signed up for the site thinking it was a great idea, sent a bunch of messages and had some chats, then realised that they've bitten off more than they can chew and they don't have the time to keep them all up. And sometimes I'm the guilty party: at times I've not followed up messages or I've just forgotten about somebody. Remembering all this stops me from getting too frustrated. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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