"Want to play it cool with someone? Seem busy and important? Then send a text—with a term of endearment—that appears to be written to someone else. Or ask 'who is this?' when you receive a text. Have a friend text you repeatedly when you're on a date. Claim not to have gotten a text you actually received. Let's call it bluffting: A text with a little bluffing."
Why don't we just call it "being a total fucking asshole"? We've already got great terms, people! No need to put the effort into making new ones!
I would've thought the WSJ had different criteria for seeming busy and important.
If you're face to face, pretend you have faceblindness! Maybe act as though you're worried the object of your affections has been replaced by an almost identical impostor. This will cultivate both a sense of mystery and a sense of needing to be cared for.
@deepomega: It's called prosopagnosia. Now don't you feel like an asshole…
@HiredGoons True stories about internet jokes: I looked it up, then decided nobody would know what it was and that faceblindness is a pretty hilarious name for a disease.
"Bluffting" is something completely different where I come from.
Why not take it one step further? Patently refuse to recognize any of your friends, relations, or colleagues, regardless of the nature of their request or the level of pain and confusion you engender. 'I'm sorry, but I don't know you,' you repeat ad nauseam, hands outstretched in an eternal half-hearted apology. Politely ask your wife to leave your home. 'I've never seen this woman in my life,' you'll tell the police, shaking your head in bemusement. 'I hope she gets the help she needs.'
Years later, you will insist that none of the nurses attending you are necessary. 'But I haven't hired any of you,' you'll wheeze through the intubation tube. 'Please. Leave me alone. Take this…take this away. I'm busy. I'm important. You don't know me. No one has ever known me.' Death will eventually prove you right.
Capgras Syndrome is gonna be huge in 2012.
Such douchery is so 2006, maybe 2007 at the outside.
When I want to appear busy and important, I read the FT instead.
Or respond in a different language. Follow it up with a breezy text "So sorry, meant to send this to Jean Pierre at the Roc in Cap d'Antibes. My bad!"
By the way, the article gets far, far, worse after you clicked close tab.
Increasingly, I just want to pour bleach in my eyes just to feel something.
I know it's been said many a time, but cocaine is a helluva drug.