When she sees the SIZE of your bank balance, she'll be digging YOUR

June 8, 2003 10:11 AM

When she sees the SIZE of your bank balance, she'll be digging YOUR "gold" in no time!Today's Independent on Sunday newspaper carried the story of these fake ATM receipts showing a balance of $314,159.26.

"After you write your number on this receipt (conveniently folded in your wallet), hand it to the member of opposite sex and watch how fast they call you!"

Tragically, they look nothing like UK ATM receipts, but it had me wondering - what's the lowest-down dirtiest line/ trick you (sorry: I mean, a friend of yours) ever pulled in an attempt to impress a member of the desired sex?
posted by Pericles (45 comments total)

Mine, by the way, was to start smoking in an attempt to impress Miss Amanda B------. I never did get the girl, but twenty years later I'm a lot poorer and wheezier because of it.
posted by Pericles at 10:14 AM on June 8, 2003

And you don't even have to feel bad about it, since any smart girl will recognize the sum anyway, and catch the joke =)
posted by kickingtheground at 10:23 AM on June 8, 2003

er......wheres the story ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:55 AM on June 8, 2003

A friend of mine (honest, it wasn't me) was chatting up this girl in a bar. She was blonde, chesty and attractive but apparently not too bright. My buddy tells her he's an engineer and she starts going off on how she loves trains and such. He never told her the truth but he still says that it was the best 72 hours he's ever spent.
posted by substrate at 11:00 AM on June 8, 2003

At one time in my life I used to be honest, thoughtful, and respectful and did foolish things like treating a woman in a gentlemanly manner (opening doors, flowers, etc.) when out on dates... it took some time, but I finally got it in my head that do so is like sticking a note on your back saying "Punk me around like I'm Steve Urkle."

Oh to be naive again.
posted by rogue at 11:24 AM on June 8, 2003

Pericles: I did the same thing, but it only took me ten years to stop.
posted by mosch at 11:25 AM on June 8, 2003

Fake tits are the biggest deception going.
posted by HTuttle at 11:27 AM on June 8, 2003

Fake tits are the biggest deception going.

Hard to credit this, seeing as it's so very easy to tell whether a woman has implants or not.

If you find it difficult, I'm happy to give you some pointers. :)
posted by jokeefe at 12:07 PM on June 8, 2003

"Women always want you to be honest. But women are the biggest liars around. Even before you open your mouth you lie. You've got makeup on, you're not that pretty. You've got on high heels, you're not that tall. You've got extensions, that ain't you're real hair. You've got perfume on, you don't smell like that!" -- Chris rock, from drunken memory :P
posted by delmoi at 12:11 PM on June 8, 2003

(continuing where delmoi left off)

"...you got your penis tucked, you're not a woman. You've got flesh-tone Clearisil blotches all over your crotch, you're not concealing acne..."
posted by dakotadusk at 12:17 PM on June 8, 2003

kickingtheground: I'm not sure anyone here has gotten the joke ... yet. My first reaction was "how odd that it should be that particular number." But you know, guys probably wouldn't try to pull this one on a "smart girl" anyway.

It sort of reminds me of this one charity ball I went to a few years ago. It's a real posh, formal affair, and there are probably a few gold-diggers in attendance (of both sexes). I went to the ladies room and found a whole gaggle of women in there having fits of hysterical laughter. It seems that this one guy had been selecting girls he was interested in and handing them essentially a "husband resume" ... complete with all vital physical stats, bank account balances, cars owned, career path and what he was looking for in a woman (wife). Now everything on there might very well have been true, and it was impressive sounding, but ... you have to wonder about someone who is doing that well in life who has to hand out flyers at a party to get someone to want to marry him. You know what I mean?

It basically had the opposite effect on us girls. Instead of being interested in his fat bank account and collection of sports cars and boats, we all just sort of giggled every time he walked by. Poor dear.
posted by Orb at 12:44 PM on June 8, 2003

Because it's the digits of pi to seven decimal places...
posted by jonson at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2003

Because it's the digits of pi to seven decimal places...

...but with the last digit not rounded up as it should be. Bad use of significant digits! No biscuit for you!

Somehow that was enough to throw me off.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:23 PM on June 8, 2003

When handing out fake bank balances, I prefer the more esoteric $271,828.18. That really separates the wheat from the chaff.
posted by Fabulon7 at 1:33 PM on June 8, 2003

Okay, Fab, I give up.
posted by jonson at 1:35 PM on June 8, 2003

jonson: e, the base for natural logarithms.
posted by kewms at 1:52 PM on June 8, 2003

Ha ha! Any chick that knows a cheat for Per.Oxyd is fine by me.

Good one, Fabulon!(A little obscure, though...)
posted by Fofer at 1:58 PM on June 8, 2003

I'll go for $1,618,033.99 - looks very pleasing to me!
posted by carter at 2:36 PM on June 8, 2003

Ah, the golden balance.

Since we haven't sunk to physical constants yet, I'll be the first to say that I would like 1 mol dollars in my account. Unfortunately, my balance is often an imaginary quantity.

Haw haw, snort...
posted by tss at 3:39 PM on June 8, 2003

carter: Golden ratio. Next!
posted by salmacis at 3:44 PM on June 8, 2003

$42.

Nope, nevermind. Too easy. And too small. And, unfortunatly, too close to reality.
posted by dazed_one at 3:47 PM on June 8, 2003

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKSSSS!!
I kid because I care
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:47 PM on June 8, 2003

You math dabsters might be on to something. If you use some special number known only to those versed in higher mathematics on your mock bank statements to charm a woman, you might get a woman who is media savvy enough to have heard of this (you might even get a MeFier) AND who is a mathematician and gets that your faux bank balance is a homage to the magical world of numbers AND who finds the use of such an esoteric, geekish in-joke to be irresistibly sexy. Dating is a crap shoot as we all know - why not take the chance.
posted by orange swan at 3:52 PM on June 8, 2003

Hey jokeefe, this point interests me (as I guess it does any guy). Isn't the problem with implant-spotting that we don't check the negative results?

You see someone with absurd looking breasts. They're obviously fake (maybe). But does anyone think to check whether that woman over there with the normal looking breasts has implants? How would you tell, short of asking? So to say you know fake breasts when you see them is a bit hopeful, unless you're always checking. Which'd probably be rude, or something. (This is kind of true for women with "obviously-fake" breasts, too - maybe they're just freaks/lucky (depending on preference)?)

It's not that I care that you're besmirching the reputation of cosmetic surgeons or fake breasts. It's more of a general problem that I have with stereotypes - not that they are bad (I think they're a simple fact of the way the mind works), but that even the fairly straightforward ones are frequently just plain wrong.

A workmate of mine occasionally comments that Asian drivers are worse than most drivers (do you have this stereotype in the US?). When he sees a piece of bad-mannered driving by an Asian, he makes a little tick in his head - one more piece of evidence. Right? Except he doesn't keep a score of the times he sees competent Asian drivers, or bad non-Asian drivers. He never tests the theory he has.

Don't mean to derail (although it seemed fairly freeform already)... It's just that my dad used to complain that I never did the dishes. Which wasn't true, it was just that he only noticed when I didn't do the dishes.
We all have our crosses, I suppose.
posted by wilberforce at 4:21 PM on June 8, 2003

well, I wouldn't mind to settle with $57,721.56 on my account...
posted by gonz at 4:56 PM on June 8, 2003

Check this out:
Transaction Summary
Acct#: xxxxx
Action: Involution of Account
Current Balance: 64i
posted by j.edwards at 5:06 PM on June 8, 2003

Then again, coming from the financial perspective, anyone who would leave $300K+ in a checking account is an idiot, and no savvy femme is going to be impressed by that.
posted by JParker at 6:07 PM on June 8, 2003

no savvy femme is going to be impressed by that.

I don't think anyone thought this would be useful to impress smart girls, that's not the point :) (see the actual number for an even more obvious clue)
posted by Space Coyote at 6:38 PM on June 8, 2003

Are you kidding? With the perfect Pi Balance, no way you want interest to change it!

It's kinda like peanut butter when you open it for the very first time. Or like how that MiguelCardoso guy stopped posting forever when he got to that whole 300/3000 MeFi 100/2000 MeTa apex. You just don't want to ruin the evenness.
posted by tss at 11:26 PM on June 8, 2003

Since I have nothing but disdain for guys that flaunt wealth and material as a way to get girls, I probably wouldn't think all that much about the sum. I'd simply be disgusted. I've always enjoyed shooting down guys like that

Any gold digging on my part in the past consisted of trying to nail the guy with the biggest collection of quality vinyl and CDs(my sweetie has 1000+ CDs). And cool shoes. You can tell a lot about a man by looking at his shoes, and I'm not talking about that.

I have to admit though, if not for the clue, I wouldn't have gotten the joke...which makes me a "kinda-sorta" smart girl, I guess. Thank God I've got big tits.
posted by echolalia67 at 12:24 AM on June 9, 2003

Kind of the opposite gig but apposite to the numbers theme.

An old housemate of mine used to give a fake phone number to girls he’d picked up on a one night stand basis. The number – a London telephone number – was 0207 [big space] 770 5519.

Write it with French sevens (with the middle bar) and hold it up to a mirror. Message received.

Worse, after about six months of this routine our house was bored at work one day so conferenced in on a call and called the number. The chap on the other end had some, erm, vivid, sentiments when we let him into what we’d been up to….

Not nice. Grown up since thenn.
posted by dmt at 2:42 AM on June 9, 2003

Then again, why is this directed at males only?

You can say what you will about gender equality, but some things have not changed much. Women still seem to expect to be showered with roses and gifts, to be taken out to dinner, to be pampered; and they still list things like higher education and a secure financial situation as essential characteristics in a partner.

I realize this a cliché deliberated played by the advertising in question, and I assume that many relationships and dating rituals must be well-balanced -- but as a single heterosexual male in a sexually emancipated Scandinavian country, the trend in male-female relationships seem awfully conservative overall.

Worse, I get the sense that when a male does not play the traditional suitor part, he is seen as somewhat less interesting. In other words, if the guy does not blind-fold his date and drive her up to that fantastically romantic mountain cabin (you know, the one with fireplace and the fur rug) and present the diamond necklace and the champagne on ice, he's boring or negligent -- but if the girl doesn't do it, she's merely playing her part.

Conversely, I suspect a lot of people actually -- gasp! -- prefer the active-masculine/passive-feminine roles and see it as a romantic tradition worth holding on to, heralding back to the days when men were men, women were women, and small furry things from Alpha Centauri were small furry things from Alpha Centauri.

If a girl gave me a fake ATM receipt I would probably consider her shallow, but it would feel like a step in the right direction for our culture. So pamper me, dammit.
posted by gentle at 3:34 AM on June 9, 2003

A female friend of mine actually cried when I dissected the origins and purpose of romance as a way for girls who didn't get to pick their husbands to be happy with what they have, and assume that there was one predestined romantic match for everyone...

she actually said "I don't think I want to know that"
posted by Space Coyote at 5:02 AM on June 9, 2003

Current Balance: 64i

Complex number theory was the only course I ever failed at university. God damn that prof. Fifteen years later and I'm still seething about it.

'course the boozing didn't help much either, if I must be honest, so even though he was the poorest excuse for a professor evar, it wasn't entirely his fault.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:28 AM on June 9, 2003

Sorry, off on a tangent.

[/(ex-)mathgeek]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:30 AM on June 9, 2003

Then again, coming from the financial perspective, anyone who would leave $300K+ in a checking account is an idiot....

Well, not to pick nits, but if you've already got tens of millions invested in real estate and the market, and millions in your savings account, the perhaps you like to keep just a few hundred thousand in your checking account for, y'know, daily spending, play money, and showering on new friends.

At least, I think that's the impression these ATM slips are trying to give off.
posted by Fofer at 6:38 AM on June 9, 2003

gentle: In your sexually emancipated Scandinavian country, do women make less than men? Western culture still has conservative ideas about men supporting women financially. Open up more career paths to women, level the salaries, and remove the sexism from the workplace and THEN you can ask women to pay for their own dinners.

Who asks who out, anyway? Who's the one who's interested to start? Maybe this has more to do with the gifts than womens' expectations ... because I don't know many women who stop caring about their men because they haven't received any expensive gifts lately.
posted by adzuki at 6:57 AM on June 9, 2003

I'd go after ladies with an ATM receipt showing a balance of 305,326.13. I thought that they had used pi in the movie, but after some Google-Fu, it appears I was wrong.

~~[[[8^)

posted by Fezboy! at 7:14 AM on June 9, 2003

Worse, I get the sense that when a male does not play the traditional suitor part, he is seen as somewhat less interesting.

everyone's different, etc, but I'm among the women who would rather scrap the whole traditional roles thing. But it rubs both ways; there are definitely guys who feel uncomfortable with the woman asking them out, or offering to pay for something (even if she makes more - maybe especially if she makes more). Asking someone out is stressful to start with, but if you're concerned not just about whether he's attracted to you but also whether he'll be put off by your forwardness, it complicates things. (And yes, fine, if a guy would be put off by that, he probably wouldn't be right for me, etc, but when you're into someone, it's hard to think like that)

So pamper me, dammit.

By the traditional roles, that's what women do - buying those expensive gifts is the "romantic" way to make up for the other 364 days that year when she made dinner and cleaned up after you, etc. What a sucky system.
posted by mdn at 7:32 AM on June 9, 2003

buying those expensive gifts is the "romantic" way to make up for the other 364 days

i like to get gifts as much as the next person, and it's not about the price tag, it's about the thoughtfulness of it. one ex of mine was notoriously forgetful and stingy, yet (or maybe, thus) delighted me on my birthday with a single candle in a chocolate cupcake when i woke up, awwwww. by the same token, nothing stings like realizing how much $$ you wasted on someone who dumped you...argh, why did i get him that silver keyring?! >:X

this "faux balance" trick wouldn't work as an enticement under a little theory of mine, that those with plumper wallets are far less generous than those with less. it's a generalization, but i've found that people with more wealth, especially a wealthy family, spend far less on gifts (not to mention tipping/splitting the check, etc.) than those who really don't have the money but enjoy splurging and spoiling their loved ones. i guess at the very top and very bottom of the pile it's a different story (think Richard on "Sex and the City"), but in between, i'd rather have the husband from "The Gift of the Magi" than Ebenezer Scrooge. :P
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:17 AM on June 9, 2003

serafina, I was just talking about the stereotypical roles the way gentle described them above, where only the man was supposed to spend some enormous sum on some traditionally romantic but not original present. I love thoughtful gifts too - I'd much prefer to receive a piece of original artwork, or a cheap little knick knack with a great story, or whatever, than a diamond necklace.

An ad campaign that was up near where I live really depressed me recently - it was for diamond jewelry and one of the tag lines was something like "you'll never have to plagiarize romantic poetry again." I found it really sad, from basically every angle - that the woman would prefer diamonds to poetry, that the man would plagiarize to get what he wanted - just, bleah.

re: the wealthy being stingy: how do you think they got rich to start with? :)
posted by mdn at 10:27 AM on June 9, 2003

In invoking the diamond jewelry cliché I seem to have inadvertedly implied that money was the main issue. Actually, monetary value was farthest from my mind when I counted a few ways in which a male might court or otherwise impress the opposite sex.

By the traditional roles, that's what women do - buying those expensive gifts is the "romantic" way to make up for the other 364 days that year when she made dinner and cleaned up after you, etc. What a sucky system.

Which might be true if this distribution of roles was still the norm. My impression is that Modern Woman is no more expecting to blindly cook and clean and make babies for the hub than she is expecting to get married away to a total stranger at the tender age of 16.

My past girlfriends have been singularly uninterested in playing the part of housewife, which I find liberating, not the least because I sense it's partly because we have grown past a certain pettiness perpetuated by conservative traditions, and that we care more about loving each other than whether the dust bunnies are procreating under the bed; and yet they still get turned on when I play the traditional alpha male part, which I find depressing, because it's not counterbalanced by any significant effort on their part.

I suppose both sexes need to find ways to impress our partners that go beyond mere romantic clichés. Personally, I dolove to cook (let's face it, nobody loves to clean up) and take pleasure in being able to satisfy my hypothetical partner's pallate. I love setting everything up for the perfectly romantic candle-lit dinner evening, but I don't love it as much if I don't know that my partner will occasionally do the exact same thing to me.
posted by gentle at 12:03 PM on June 9, 2003

But does anyone think to check whether that woman over there with the normal looking breasts has implants? How would you tell, short of asking? So to say you know fake breasts when you see them is a bit hopeful, unless you're always checking

I'm wouldn't touch the "romance" conversation with a ten foot pole, but I am happy to throw out some answers to this interesting question. Fake breasts look obvious to me, and it's not like I'm doing daily inspections or anything; it's like noticing if someone is wearing makeup or not, or has a pedicure. So:

Look for the ridge of the implant above the breast--the curve that (naturally) medium to large breasted women get when wearing a bra that pushes the breasts together and up. You can often see the outline of the implant.

Real breasts move. Breasts with implants do not. What happens when she walks? Do they move (even a tiny bit) or sit rigid on the chest? Just try to be discreet when checking this out; no woman likes you obviously staring at her breasts, enhanced or not.

Antigravity effect: unnaturally high, nipples looking straight ahead (so to speak); out of proportion with rest of frame. Women who are model skinny, unless freaks of nature, will have breasts in proportion. Breasts are fatty tissue: thin women will have small breasts. Check out un-implanted models--or, say, Gwyneth Paltrow. Skinny frame, tiny breasts.
posted by jokeefe at 2:47 PM on June 9, 2003

Interestingly enough, I dated one of the "Richest 40 Under 40" for several months, and happened to glance at his ATM receipt one (drunken) night very early on in our relationship. At that point I had knew he was successful (hey, I do my Googling), but I didn't know he was that financially secure -- there were more digits in his receipt than in the fake PI receipt. His financial status didn't make me fawn; it actually freaked me out for a few weeks. (I felt accutely aware of my shabby apartment, rusty car, and broke-ass bank account.)

I got over being freaked out -- he wasn't flashy with money at all, so it didn't ever feel like there was this huge gap between us. But I'm amused that some women would find a guy what kind of a bank account "hot" when I found it "intimidating."
posted by jennak at 8:13 PM on June 9, 2003

Isn't the problem with implant-spotting that we don't check the negative results?

Well, what I will say is that every pair of fake tits that i've *ahem* checked extensively, i've not really liked and some I've been rather repulsed by. Some of these gals obviously had a good surgeon, but I could still tell...they just didn't feel sexy. As far as the look test...sometimes i don't even mind implants, as long as they're tasteful...it's a reproduction of the female form (albeit, unnatural) and that is beautiful.
posted by nadawi at 12:47 AM on June 10, 2003