At least half of the world’s population knows that guys are not very bright. Even if one is a guy—and I have been said to take on the mantle—it’s very difficult to argue the point, as one observes his gendermates spitting, jeering, belching and catcalling a path through the crowd. To be sure, I am not setting myself entirely apart: at times I’ll find myself grunting for no reason whatsoever and then jolt upright, staring down at myself in surprise. Even the most refined among us are subject to frequent spills off the testosterone wagon. However, I don’t think I will ever identify with my fellow males when it comes to the way we talk (when that term can be applied) to girls.

Based on what I’ve seen and heard, a number of guys believe that the reason women buy internet service, pay their bills, sign up on social networking sites, and spend time meticulously crafting personal profiles that project their individuality, is that they are looking for guys to talk dirty to them. Forget about making new friends, catching up with lost acquaintances and maybe even meeting some cool guys for good conversation: what she’s really looking for is to meet up with an anonymous man she’s talked to for three minutes so he can drill her mercilessly with his penis, and all she requires to get this arrangement going is a clever invitation.

The only part of that sentence that can even be called an exaggeration is “clever”.

The story is the same from a number of the women I’m friends with: wherever they go online, whether it’s a social site like MySpace or Facebook or standard IMs, they are met early and often by strange guys hitting on them, with widely varying degrees of creativity and crudity.

Sometimes the attempts make efforts at romance, like the guy who wrote to a friend of mine an email with no subject and simply the message, “something about your eyes…”. Most do not bother with even this level of subterfuge. Generally they take the form of “hey ur sexy, msg me back hun”. Some are far more bold, like the message another friend got asking if she’d like someone to “make her scream louder than a drunk uncle”. A few are even fetishistic, such as the guy who wrote, “Are your feet as cute as your face? Because I’d really love to suck your toes.” And at the bottom rung of the taste ladder, there’s the guy who skips out on words entirely and just sends girls a picture of his sallow member, evidently counting on it to do all the talking for him in the same way it already does all the thinking for him.

To all the guys who have ever sent a message like this: why?

As far as I can gather, the number of times this has ever worked on a woman is zero. I have never heard of a single girl accepting such a proposal. Yet, in spite of the fact that this sort of attempt is met with near-universal rejection and blocking of the guy (or perhaps because of this fact), one has to assume that it worked for at least one guy at some point in history, and that’s why these others keep trying it. No one has ever met this man, but that could be just because, right about now, the odds place him in jail somewhere for skipping out on child support.

Another possible explanation for guys that relentlessly use this method is that they’re following the example of email spammers, using the carpet-bombing technique to try to get a bite. If your pick-up attempts are so bad that they’ve got a one in a million shot of ever working, all you have to do is use them on a million girls. 999,999 nos means one yes, after all. And even though that one girl who goes for his cheap come-ons is probably a shivering husk of desperation and low self-esteem, he’ll probably just brag to his friends that the reason she started sobbing uncontrollably when they did the deed was that “he was too much man for her”.

Don’t get me wrong: there are many guys out there who have a sincere wish to actually get to know a girl, to have a conversation and make a connection. These courageous souls are not our subject for today, so don’t give up on all of us, ladies. Still, the losers described above need to somehow be made to feel the sting of that slap their actions would earn them in a real life setting.

And so we come to another of my ideas which I offer up on a plate for some enterprising soul, because I’m too lazy to ever implement it myself: www.drinkintheface.com. Sign up on this site, and let them install their software to interact with your web browser and all your IM clients. Whenever some shithead makes a crass and unwelcome pick-up attempt online, click the button that appears next to his message. This will transmit a signal to the guy’s computer and activate a device included standard on all new PCs, which throws a drink in the guy’s face and down the front of him. The drink would of course be kept ice cold within the device, so that as it seeps down the guy’s pants, the resulting shriveling effect will preclude the possibility of any more “commando shots” for the time being.

I feel that with this service, we could make real inroads toward a kinder, less annoying internet, where ladies can browse and meet people they identify with, and all guys don’t get a bad rap. And if it doesn’t work? There’s always plan B: www.rippedbouncerwithalatexgloveandahangover.com.