Since James Franco’s flirtatious Instagram DMs to an underage fan were leaked earlier this week, he’s probably realized that his online pickup skills aren’t as hot as he thought they were. So maybe he should take a few tips from Ben James, a 20-year-old producer who claims to sleep with 200 women a year. How does he do this? By chatting them up on Twitter.
Selfie Bruv 👊 pic.twitter.com/otdLzF8h46
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) March 14, 2014Dubbed the “Tweet-talking Casanova” by the Daily Mail, the South London–based James says he receives hundreds of messages a day from his female followers. Some of them send him full-frontal naked selfies, and some just flat-out ask him for sex.
James, who has 72,000 Twitter followers, says that this practice has netted him 200 sex partners in the last year, as well as four or five regular sex partners (the Daily Mail dubs them “tweethearts”) “on the go at once.”
“Then I get bored and find some others,” he says. Get in line, ladies! No, seriously, there is a line.
At this point, you might be wondering what kind of sweet-talking, romantic, panty-melting, Lord Byron–esque tweets James sends to ensure this kind of success rate. Well, here’s a sampling of his poetry:
If a woman is upset hold her & tell her how beautiful she is If she starts to growl, retreat to a safe distance and throw chocolate at her 😂
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) April 3, 2014
Girls who don't wear make-up act like they deserve an award or some shit, no just stop✋
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) April 3, 2014
Quote this with your favourite selfie or show off your bodies..😈
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) April 2, 2014
Fat girls who always talk about "Curves" When lads talk about curves we mean Beyonce & Kim Kardashian. Not Mr Blobby you tubby cunt.
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) April 2, 2014
I met a girl at the club last night and she said she wanted the night to be 'Magical'. . So I fucked her and disappeared.
— Benjamin James (@Officialben_) April 2, 2014Like music to your ears, ladies (or to your vaginas, as the case may be). Really loud, irritating, misogynistic music to your vaginas.
James did not respond to requests for comment.
The man is not exactly a “catch” in the traditional sense. He looks a bit like a shorter, pastier Benedict Cumberbatch, and he still lives at home with his mother. So it’s easy to dismiss boasts of his sexual prowess as flat-out lies, or just the empty bragging of an impotent manchild.
But the thing is, I don’t doubt that Ben James has a hard time picking up women on Twitter, the same way I don’t doubt that James Franco has a hard time picking up fans on Instagram with a few terse, hastily worded DMs.
For every woman who rolls her eyes and deletes cheesy, misogynistic, or sexually explicit Tinder messages, there’s one who will find them funny or flattering, interpreting the aggressiveness of the message as a reflection of the sender’s self-confidence.
If Ben James is telling the truth about his Twitter pick-up abilities, the key to his success might very well be the same thing that lots of women (myself included) would find repellent: his offensiveness, or the fact that he’s “cheeky enough to say what nobody else would dare,” as the Daily Mail puts it.
Twitter and other social media platforms allow you to present the most outrageous, larger-than-life versions of yourself in condensed form. For this reason, it’s the perfect vehicle for someone like Ben James, who, whatever his real-life shortcomings, can reinvent himself as a devil-may-care lothario in the span of 140 characters. It’s also perfect for someone like Franco, who can rack up conquests online without putting in the slightest bit of effort. If you’re a man who views the world as an ever-replenishing, customized sexual buffet, as James and Franco clearly do, the Internet is a great place for you.
HT Daily Mail | Photo via Ben James/Twitter
