If Oedipus Tried Online Dating…
posted by Daniel Solove
UPDATE: It appears that this story might indeed be dubious. It comes from a tabloid, Weekly World News. I thought it might be credible because it was coming from Yahoo! News, but now I don’t think the story is credible — or Yahoo! News for that matter.
This Yahoo! News story is so weird that it’s hard to believe, but it is quite amusing:
Skirt-chasing playboy Daniel Anceneaux spent weeks talking with a sensual woman on the Internet before arranging a romantic rendezvous at a remote beach — and discovering that his on-line sweetie of six months was his own mother!
“I walked out on that dark beach thinking I was going to hook up with the girl of my dreams,” the rattled bachelor later admitted. “And there she was, wearing white shorts and a pink tank top, just like she’d said she would.
“But when I got close, she turned around — and we both got the shock of our lives. I mean, I didn’t know what to say. All I could think was, ‘Oh my God! it’s Mama!’ ”
But the worst was yet to come. Just as the mortified mother and son realized the error of their ways, a patrolman passed by and cited them for visiting a restricted beach after dark.
“Danny and I were so flustered, we blurted out the whole story to the cop,” recalled matronly mom Nicole, 52. “The policeman wrote a report, a local TV station got hold of it — and the next thing we knew, our picture and our story was all over the 6 o’clock news. “People started pointing and laughing at us on the street — and they haven’t stopped laughing since.”
But there’s more. Consider this:
When starry-eyed Daniel asked Sweet Juliette to send him a picture, Nicole e-mailed him a photo of a curvy, half-clad cutie she’d scanned from a men’s magazine. . . .
Daniel admits he and his mother could do little but stammer and stutter around each other for days after their cyberspace exploits came to light. And his father Paul — Nicole’s husband of 27 years — wasn’t too happy when the story hit the news and his beer-drinking buddies made him the butt of their jokes.
“Dad was ticked for a while and he forbid Mom to talk to anybody on the Internet ever again,” said embarrassed Daniel.
Well, if I were “Dad,” I’d be a bit “ticked” too if my wife were arranging a secret rendezvous with some other guy on a beach — let alone having things turn out in such a bizarre and public manner. And I’d try to put the story of Oedipus out of my mind.
Hat tip: Affairs of a Sordid World
December 16, 2005 at 2:10 am
Posted in: Weird
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Responses (12)
The Moderate Voice - December 16, 2005 at 3:10 am
Awk…Ward
You think you’ve had an embarassing dating experience? I think this may trump.
BTD Venkat - December 16, 2005 at 4:13 am
If it wasn’t for the father/husband, things could have been OK. A John Cusack movie (must love dogs) has this incorporated in the storyline. There’s no husband/father though.
Nick - December 16, 2005 at 6:59 am
Um… “so weird it’s hard to believe” is about right. The article byline notes that it was originally published in Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid best known for headlines involving aliens, Nostradamus, Elvis, and various mutant babies.
Eric Goldman - December 16, 2005 at 8:46 am
Reminds me of the old song “I Want A Girl Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” Eric.
Dylan - December 16, 2005 at 11:09 am
Yeah, I missed the WWN byline the first time around, too. It’s really strange that Yahoo is republishing this crap.
ClueChick: real clues from a real chick - December 16, 2005 at 11:18 am
Worst case scenarios: Oedipus
In case you think you’ve had a bad time in cyberspace, you can probably console yourself by knowing that this didn’t happen to you! (Unless it did, in which case, you have my most sincere condolences.)…
John Armstrong - December 16, 2005 at 12:30 pm
It’s not strange at all that Yahoo news is republishing WWN stories. They’ve been doing it for a very long time, as attested by the numerous pages on Snopes that start with “people thought this was real ’cause it was on Yahoo, but they were reprinting WWN”.
Mike - December 16, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I wouldn’t discount the story just because it was in a supermarket tabloid. There was a really bizarre crime wave in my hometown. It make it into one of those tabloids. Some of the stuff in those things are true. And why is it hard to believe that someone might meet him mom over the Internet? Given the number of people looking for love online, it should be no surprise that bizarre things like this would happen.
skeptic - December 16, 2005 at 5:18 pm
This was obviously a variation on urban myths that bubble up over and over and over.
The Dating Blog - January 26, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Dating: House Takes On Dating Violence Bill
Domestic violence among teens is not topic that gets a lot of talk, but on Utah’s Capitol Hill, the talk is about expanding protective orders to include teens in abusive relationships. The term ‘Dating Violence’ is not a familiar one, but the problem …
Sarah - March 18, 2006 at 6:47 am
I my friend met her ex boyfriend the same manner once. By the way they are married now.
Adonia Adrian - October 13, 2006 at 10:37 pm
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