Perhaps this will help.
The fluorescent glow of the laptop screen was the only light in Snz’s living room as he hovered over a profile on Escortify. The photos of Linda were enticing, but in the Auckland scene, pixels were rarely proof.
"Anyone seen Linda?" he typed, hitting post. He had a budget to burn, but he wasn’t about to waste it on a ghost.
The digital silence didn't last long. JohnnyPunter, a veteran of the boards, was the first to chime in with the cynical shorthand of a man who had been burned before. "Looks like a B&S," he shot back. A Bait and Switch—the oldest trick in the book.
Snz hesitated. He had two reliable regulars on speed dial, but the thrill of the "new" was pulling at him. He’d heard whispers that Linda worked for the 55a crowd, a management outfit he actually trusted. "I want someone new," he admitted to the thread, "but I don’t want to waste the punting budget."
While Snz wavered, Jessie45—a "Big Daddy" on the forums—had already done the legwork. He posted a blunt post-mortem from a Chinese review site.
"I made an appointment. Linda exists, but the ads are a fantasy. Figure and service? Average. At $300, it’s a rip-off. You can find better for $200."
The glamour of the profile began to fade. Snz read the verdict and retreated to the familiar. "Ended up choosing to be safe," he updated the thread the next morning. "Saw my regular."
But the mystery of Linda’s identity went deeper. Deleted Member 1232 stepped into the digital light to map out the web. "She’s not a B&S," they explained, "but you aren’t talking to her. You’re talking to her boss."
According to the veteran, Linda was just one piece of a high-stakes shell game. The "Boss" was a ghost in the machine, managing profiles for Coco in Wellington, Alice in Epsom, and Lemon—who had just hiked her prices to $320.
Linda, it turned out, was a woman of many names. On NZG, she was Nana, a traveling ghost who haunted three different addresses in Mt. Wellington and a quiet house in Papatoetoe before disappearing on tour.
By October, a new face named AOK01 joined the hunt, offering a fresh appraisal of "Nana." But the trail had gone cold. In the end, Linda remained what she always was: a fleeting image on a screen, a line item in a boss’s ledger, and a cautionary tale for those looking to spend $300 on a dream that didn't quite live up to the lighting.