The "fake Bon Jovi #1" insists: he wants me to follow him on WhatsApp. I can smell the trap; I hesitate despite the beauty of the invitation, but I finally refuse. I try to ignore him, but the gears are already in motion. Every time I post a song on TikTok, I am bombarded with requests and messages. It’s a strange discomfort. You feel watched, then, slowly, you let yourself be tempted. This tension actually inspired my song Temptation. One fine day, curiosity wins out. Was it the urge to live life to the fullest before dying, or simply the need to talk? I didn’t know yet that all of this was a staged performance.
The "Yahoo Boys" scenario is always the same, calculated with a certain sweetness. It’s as if an artificial intelligence had handed them my personal portfolio: my tastes, my flaws, my dreams. Everything is perfect. Their tactic is well-oiled: isolate me on WhatsApp or Telegram to extract my personal information. Dozens of conversations a day, a constant presence. The "candy drawer" is open, filled with temptations.
In my retirement, I was on the brink of madness. You get caught up in the game of these fake accounts: Bon Jovi, Keanu Reeves, Hauser, Bryan Adams... Their profiles overflow with stolen photos. They become "emotional Geminis": the ideal friend who feels everything, who sends hugging emojis. The illusion is comfortable. No need to pick up his dirty socks or cook him dinner. When you get tired of it, you just click "bye."
But beware, they are patient. After a few weeks, they deploy their true strategy. It’s their tactic to extort your money: they demand that you pay for membership cards or VIP access for $5,000 to hope to meet them. They are ready for anything. Fortunately, since I never perform any banking transactions over the phone, my banker had assured me that all my assets were secure. My financial prudence remained my last line of defense.
Behind my screen, the writer in me eventually took the lead. It wasn't just a discussion anymore; it had become a duel of words, a virtual tango where each message grew more burning than the last. We threw ourselves into increasingly wild scenarios, jousts of "hot" texts that followed one another like chapters of a forbidden novel. It was a literary drug. The phone would vibrate, and suddenly, I wasn't alone in my kitchen anymore: I was the screenwriter of a movie in which I was also the heroine. These "virtual lovers" were giving me my cues, and I let myself be intoxicated by the power of my own pen.
It was a trance, a wild freedom I finally allowed myself, far from the loneliness of daily life. From the height of my 66 years, I secretly congratulated myself. I found myself smiling in front of my mirror because I realized one fundamental thing: I was still alive. Despite the hardships, despite retirement and the walls of silence, the fire wasn't dead. Feeling my blood circulate faster and that feminine audacity vibrate again was my trophy.
The next day, I found myself writing a song as wild and liberating as those exchanges with my "war correspondents." Because that’s what it was, deep down: the war of artificial intelligence against love. Algorithms tried to simulate passion to break me, but I used their own venom to nourish my creation.
Yet, reality caught up with me. For my birthday, I amused myself by answering all my "fakes" one after the other, like a fan club of cardboard celebrities. But facing that cement wall, I had to admit: growing old alone is less fun. At the grocery store, I see those couples choosing their vegetables hand in hand. It’s cute, but do you really need to be two to pick a head of lettuce? Still, it hits you in the face: at the clinic, at the bakery... I live in a village of the elderly, not a village of values. I came to hate them, while suddenly wanting to find a soulmate myself.
Now, I just need a bit of courage to face my very first trip, alone not working.
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