On Mastodon, a follower sent me the following YouTube video, saying “a little thought for you tonight on my way home from work, I listened to this”. I confess everything, Judge: the first part is me.
To run away
I’ve had my habits on a certain Balearic island since I was born. Suffice to say that every summer, the return to Mallorca sounds like a return home. Sometimes I have a language gap when talking about Mallorca as my home. That tells you how good I feel about it. I even moderate several Facebook groups about the island, to help travelers find their way around.
Having had enough of tripping over strollers and couples in the most festive corner of my resort area and also not wishing to risk being indicted for embezzlement of a minor, I made a mistake. I asked on one of the groups where 30-somethings could go for a good night out.
First tip: never do that. My message was very misinterpreted – to the delight of the friend who was traveling with me and who spent ten days giggling stupidly: everyone thought I was looking to meet single French people. This is how I spent several days dodging, more or less politely, what we call in our jargon, “hello, how are you”. It was my first mistake.
Send help
I should have been clear from the start: I was looking for places to spend a nice evening, but not necessarily to rub shoulders with French people. The island has the advantage of having several nationalities from all over Europe, including among the residents. Even if it means going on vacation abroad, you might as well take the opportunity to discover cultures other than your own. But that didn’t deter another band member.
After a cordial exchange on various places in the capital, he asked me why I hadn’t been on television since the start of the COVID epidemic. Then he asked me to investigate him, based on my experience on Arcadia. I didn’t have to look far, since he gave me his biography 24 hours later, without having asked anything.
But, the worst part was that he openly bragged about stalking me and determined, through his high knowledge of psychology, that I had a certain type of personality, which would fit very well with the his, that I was a zebra and that we were made for each other. At this point in the conversation, I was seriously considering requesting my incorporation into the foreign legion.
Nutshell
This was my second mistake: I had forgotten that when you agree to chat with someone on Facebook, he has access to your various publications. He finally understood my silence, not without splitting a message so long that it took several screenshots to show it to my friends. In the meantime, I had found something to occupy my Monday evenings.
In my area, several pubs organized quizzes and bingos, generally British pubs where the atmosphere is warm, funny and where everyone is having fun. Today, quizzes have given way to screens to broadcast football matches. But a pub continues this tradition of quizzes. Direction therefore the PNG for the quiz. It is organized in several rounds, with a giant deck of cards, which requires a small installation. During the round before the card game, a guy sits at the table across from mine. Notifying that I was alone, he tries to start a conversation, during the installation of the board of giant cards.
After 10 minutes of monosyllabic answers, he calmly told me “I studied mental medicine for four years in Paris, I know when someone doesn’t want to talk”. A few minutes later, he leaves, not without leaving me a letter so unhealthy that she made a friend say that if he had persisted, either I would end up in a sect, or in the miscellaneous section. Note that the first does not preclude the second. Since then, I’ve been thinking about actually joining a convent.
Bad reputation
Without going so far as to say that other travelers from other countries are exemplary – there are far too many videos of Punta Balena showing the opposite – it must be recognized that the French sometimes live up to their bad reputation.
In our Facebook group, not a day goes by without someone asking us for “cheap”, “good plans on a small budget” but with luxury service. There are those who rebel because the water is not free in the restaurant – above all don’t talk to them about Belgium, they will feel unwell – those who don’t understand why not everyone speaks French and then, we have our “Benoît” to use Doully’s expression.
They are those who are looking for friendships or more if affinities, with the tenderness and delicacy of a Ukrainian tractor on automatic pilot and who think that stalking you is a good idea. So, service message to my “Benoît” from Facebook: if you had done your research correctly, you would have known that outside of politics, my great passion is horror films and that I have a lot of imagination. .
Moral of the story: digital hygiene, even on vacation, you have to think about it. As for me, I’m going to think about which convent to settle in.