Last week, Jose Canseco's exchange of suggestive direct messages led to the admission that "I made a huge mistake."
That Twitter exchange with a female fan that may or may not have been the catalyst for his breakup with his girlfrield, the self-described, "Model Leila," but it seemed apparent to me that Jose Canseco was definitely interested in exchanging flirty DMs with fans. Especially once he tweeted:
Maybe I should start dating some Twitter chicks
— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) April 22, 2012
The clear sign of a man ready to send nude photos to strangers over Twitter, right? But it turns out Jose is much classier than that.
I changed my Twitter avatar to a photo of a sexy model and gave my account the kittenish name, "Madison Evart." Then, I replied to a tweet from Jose asking him to follow me back so we could direct message. Moments later he followed and send a DM:
"Hot baby email ur contact info".
I replied with an email address, and he responded with his phone number. I sent a text so that we could begin exchanging photos via text (using photos of the sexy model, not myself).
Instead, he called.
On the phone, he was polite, charming, sweet, and funny. He was staying at a hotel in Long Island and going to a nightclub appearance later that evening. He suggested I come out to the nightclub, but he wasn't sure exactly what town it was in and how far from New York City it actually was. We talked about Fenway Park and I told him how I was a Red Sox fan.
At one point, Jose did show skepticism that I was actually the girl in the photo on Twitter and asked me if my eyes were green or blue. I answered, "brown". He seemed ok with this. When I checked model's photo that I was using, her eyes were blue.
I ended the call saying I'd consider coming out to Long Island, but hopefully we could send each other some pics.
I love a good prank phone call, and I love a good troll on Twitter. In this spirit, I couldn’t resist an opportunity for a double-troll, so I tweeted at @ATTWireless complaining about my text service.
Jose must have some old phone that doesn’t accept image texts, because none of the photos I sent him would go through. I ended up DMing them as links to him. Instead of sending regular image texts, he was sending me links to old photos of himself – one of the photos I recognized because it used to be his Twitter avatar.
I gave my pitiful sexting game my best shot, “I wanna see yr lousievillslugger :-P." No dice. He smartly replied he does not send his “goods” over the phone.
It became clear we had two different goals: he wanted to meet in person, I wanted him to send photographic evidence that his genitals had been deformed by steroid abuse. We were headed for a stalemate.
Jose called again around 11pm, and I didn’t answer. He must’ve heard my real name on my voicemail, because he followed up with a text saying “you’re not Madison, who are you?” I didn’t reply, but by 2am I guess he didn’t care if I wasn’t Madison because he sent another link to the same photo of him at the gym.
And now we know what position Jose Canseco prefers other than outfielder.
The ethics of this exchange are, I concede, ambiguous. I first called Canseco for personal amusement; I told the story to colleagues, who insisted I write about it. But the typical rule, my editor tells me, is that you only use deception that get a story you couldn't get through the front door; and that there's typically some social value involved. This one passes the first test, but flunks the second.
This morning, knowing my general interest in Jose Canseco, comedienne Julie Klausner forwarded me an email exchange between Jose and herself. Her email:
Hello,
I'm a writer for ------- Magazine and I understand you might be in town this week?
Would you be interested in getting together to discuss your twitter, Kenny Powers, and anything else going on in your world?
Thanks so much in advance.
Best,
Julie Klausner
Jose's reply:
Are you a real redhead
Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!
And my worries that Jose would have acted differently had I been upfront about being a writer for BuzzFeed melted away.