Covid forced us to take lessons online from the beginning of February until the end of June, 2020. We are in Hubei, China. It was so prolonged a span that both teachers and students were hurt by boredom and fatigue. I cannot remember exactly when it started, but overnight I found almost all my classmates dating someone on the Internet. Their online romantic antics might have been sparked when they were playing PC games in gaming communities.

I did not play any games; nor did I date anyone, but I was deeply concerned about some of my buddies, who were hopelessly addicted to gaming and online dating. Peter was one of them. Peter and I have been friends since kindergarten. It would be an understatement to say that Peter played games heavily every day. I bet that on a lot of days he slept for no longer than 3 or 4 hours barely for survival. As far as I knew, he was dating a couple of girls simultaneously while gaming.

To wake my long-time buddy Peter up to his folly, I came up with an idea. One day I applied for a game ID. In the profile, I portrayed myself as a 16-year-old girl who badly needed a boyfriend. For my avatar, I adopted an image of a Lolita. At the same time, I downloaded a cute app called Voice Changer. Through the app, I could manipulate my voice to sound just as sweet as any teenage girl.

Everything ready, I made my first appearance in the gaming room, where my friends including Peter were doing LOL. Soon after my presence was detected, several boys, Peter included, started to message me, inviting me to be their sweetheart. Of course, I went for Peter and our dating kicked off.

Every time we hung out online, we were playing LOL together, voice chatting and flirting with each other. The voice changer was very effective. As days went by, Peter seemed to be mesmerised by me, or rather by my enchanting fake voice.

One day, all of sudden, Peter asked me for my picture. I got a sexy girl’s photo on a website and sent it over. Another day, Peter confessed, “Sugar, you sound so sweet! I want to **** you.” I was more than amused by his reaction to my beguiling voice. Feigning coyness, I said, “Oh, my dear. We are still too young for sex. You’ll have to wait, boy.”

Weeks later, Peter asked, “Where do you come from, Sugar?” Trying to contain my mirth, I went innocently, “My city is so insignificant probably you might never have heard about it. I live in Shiyan, Hubei.”

“Oh, Lord!” Peter exclaimed. “What a coincidence! We are in the same town, Sugar.” Right away, he pleaded with me to go out and meet him in the People’s Square, even though the entire town was still officially in clampdown mode.

Sensing the time was ripe to teach Peter a lesson, I switched off the app. In my regular tone, I playfully asked Peter, “Do you still fancy me, Peter? This is your classmate, Patrick.”

My reader, you can imagine what happened after that. When it dawned on him that he had been fooled for such a long time, Peter cursed me. He cursed me a lot. All kinds of obscenities and profanities set upon my ears.

I hope that my trick has helped my soulmate Peter to realise how foolish it would be to date on the Internet if we knew nothing about the other party’s real identity.