Recently, a photo of myself I’d posted to Instagram garnered a rather strange comment:

Weeks after I’d initially posted the picture, the folks from “@pierrearden_team_snowp” crept in to say:

• Hey Paul, we’re really into your fashion and would like to organize a collab. Msg our main account @pierrearden_ and let them know we sent you!

They weren’t specific, so it’s difficult to guess what part of “my fashion” they like. Is it my Goodr sunglasses (Hey-oh, look who’s influencing now!)? The unbranded t-shirt and hoodie? Perhaps it’s that unfortunate pimple on my chin.

Whatever had caught @pierrearden_team_snowp’s eye, I knew I had to get aboard this gravy train, and fast. I was ticketed for the social media big leagues. I was going to “collab” with “@pierrearden_”, whoever the heck that was, on their “main account”!

Never mind that my Instagram account has just 1,000 followers, a number which is surely much too small to be worth, well, anything. I decided to take one for my readers, and see just what the scheme here was. Checking in on @pierrearden_, I learned it was a watch company with around 60,000 followers.

Against my better judgement, I messaged them the following:

• Your @pierrearden_team_snowp account it “really into my fashion”, and want to “organize a collab”, so they told me to message here. I am…intrigued.

Hey, it was truthful. I was indeed intrigued by what the scam might be. In just a few minutes, they replied:

• Hey Paul!

  We have been reaching out to a few people who fit our style for a potential collaboration.

  We don’t usually do this, but we want to offer you 50% off everything in our store, so that you can wear the latest timepieces.

  All we ask, is that you tag us in a picture of you wearing it and we will feature you on our page.

  Would this interest you?🙌

Nothing against these particular watches, but this offer would have been unappealing to me even if they were going to send me one for free. My response was brief, dismissive, and admittedly slightly rude:

• Oh, ha. No, it would not.

Their social media handler could not be flapped, however, and even made a second attempt to get a sale:

• No worries, we understand. And thank you so much for dropping by. We would love you to be on our team in the future! You can always get back to us and please feel free to look around. Have an amazing day! Here is a 25% off discount code for taking some of you [sic] time Code: THANKYOU25

I’m not sure a 25% coupon makes much sense when I was just offered 50% off, but perhaps they thought I’d share it. You may notice that I’ve opted not to even link to this company directly, and I’ve blacked the coupon code out. If you really want it, you can highlight the text to reveal it, though I suspect you could also just message them to request in on that 50% discount that they “don’t usually do”.

Of course, maybe they really did want me. If this was my one shot to break into the glamorous world of male modeling, I guess I blew it.

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