>>18
Thank you for your necromancer input, harambot-kun.

>>1
Let's have an executive summary 10 years later. The hobby described in >>1 is far more prevalent now than it used to be.

Frequently done in automated fashion, often even involving primitive chatbots with mined data about the target. SNS botspam , spread malware, phishing, nigerian cons.

But of course there's ton of human on human soceng too - for more innocent things, like getting to know people on social networks. Shallow as online relationships have grown, strangers would never talk to the real you as opposed to the more welcoming internet 10 years ago, so you have to pretend all that more. Pretty people are more honest and nicer after all, lizard brain tells me.

For more detail, google "catfishing". Neurotypicals treat it with scorn for some reason, but hey, this is the internet, everything in here must be true, right?