Dear Friend:

You suck.

You drew me to your website with promises of fast muscle gains and even faster fat loss. I know we’re friends because that’s the first thing I saw on your home page. It said right there at the top: “Dear Friend.” That makes it official, doesn’t it? That we’re friends, I mean. I don’t have a lot of friends, so when you reached out to me via the Internet saying you wanted to be my friend like that I took it seriously.

And now I’m upset because you’re not being a very good friend. I think you might be one of those “frenemies;” a frenemy who lies. You’re not lying to me, are you?

First, I’m not sure if that’s really a picture of your body at the top of your website. If it is, then how come the head is chopped off? I mean, your abs are so sculpted and oily and hairless, and your muscles bulging, so why wouldn’t you want to include your head in that photo to show that it’s really you? Maybe it isn’t you. Maybe I’m right and you’re lying to me.

But, wait, we’re friends, right? I guess I can forgive that little deception. After all, we can’t expect our friends to be 100% honest with us all the time, can we? I’ve got friends reading my blog and they politely refrain from telling me my stories really aren’t that funny, and that I’ve only got a four-pack instead of a six-pack, and that they hear a bit of a lisp when I talk.

I guess I can’t expect you to be honest all the time either, but that wasn’t the only time.

Then you told me you knew the “secret” to turn my body in a “fat incinerating blast furnace” without doing any cardio training and by focusing on special super foods like acai berry. You said I could lose 20 pounds in 20 days. Well, I did a bit of homework and came to the realization that acai berry does nothing for weight loss and the only way I can lose that much weight that fast is to chop off a leg, and I’m kind of attached to my legs because I need them for running. I like running, by the way, so why would I want to listen to you tell me that cardio is bad? I have all these scientists and medical professionals who have degrees from respected universities telling me it’s good. I’ve noticed that it makes me feel great, makes me happy, improved my weight training abilities, and certainly worked to drop a lot of fat, so what is this secret you have that makes doing cardio so bad? Is this yet another lie of yours? Perhaps it’s a lie that you use on other friends of yours, thinking that by saying they don’t have to do cardio that you’re telling them what they want to hear, because not everyone likes hard work. I can understand why you might want to do that, although I don’t agree with it. I think you should tell people the truth, even if they don’t want to hear it.

Then I saw that you wanted to sell me a book. That’s okay, because in a way I guess you could say I’m trying to do the same thing. I’m giving away 80% of my book for free right now and when it eventually gets published I’ll encourage my readers to go out and buy it. That’s capitalism and there is nothing wrong with it. I figure it will be in the middle price range of fitness books; if I had to guess, I’d say it will cost about $20-$25 because there will be a lot of pictures, and pictures cost money. Your book has pictures, right? I’m sure it does. Lots of high quality ones, I bet.

Anyway, your book is finished and I can buy it right now, you say, but I have to act fast if I want the “special introductory price.” This is the part where I get confused, because the special price is $39. That’s quite a bit more than most published fitness books I would find in a book store, and from a book store I get an actual book that’s been through a strict editing process to ensure a higher quality product. From you, I only get a PDF document for my $39. What makes your book so special that I have to pay twice as much, then print it off and hole-punch it all and then put it in a binder? Once you factor in the paper, toner and binder costs now we’re up to around $50, not to mention the extra time it takes me and the fact that I still don’t have a “book” – I’ve just got a big-assed binder full of stuff that hasn’t been professionally edited.

But since we’re friends, I couldn’t believe that you’d be trying to scam me. Friends don’t do that to one another, so I read the stuff on your home page. By the way, it’s a really long home page. I know my website isn’t the prettiest; I did it all myself and I’m not a very technical guy. I’ve got an MBA and we’re kind of stupid about those sorts of things. Anyway, I also think you got carried away with the ALL CAPS, the highlighting, and the multiple exclamation points!!!!! This is just one friend giving helpful advice to another.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, you’re not scamming me, are you? Of course not, because we’re friends and you’ve got all these great before and after pictures from other people who’ve used your secret formula for getting into shape. So that’s proof that your system really works, right? I mean, I realize that your writing kind of sucks, but I suppose I could get past that if the information was really good. I realize that I’m not Hemmingway, but I do my best to make my prose readable. Here’s another bit of advice from one friend to another: I think you need to work on your writing because from what I’ve seen on your site it could use some polishing. Maybe you should consider taking a class.

I hope you’re not offended for me telling you that, because if the information really gets results then I suppose the writing isn’t as important. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to spend the $39, even on a friend, without doing a little bit of homework. $39 buys me a two-four of good beer, so I had to engage in my due diligence before making a final decision.

This is when I started to realize that maybe you aren’t such a good friend after all. I saw other sites that weren’t yours, but used the same before and after pictures. How can you explain this? What’s more, I read reviews of your site that were supposedly written by different people but said the exact same thing. I mean, they used the exact same words, but they had different names attached to them. I also learned that your “special introductory rate, the price is going up soon” has been at the same level for the last three years. Isn’t that sort of like a used car salesman saying he’s got a few other buyers on the line?

I was starting to seriously question our friendship, and decided that we needed to take a break from one another, but when I tried to leave you wouldn’t let me go. You wouldn’t let me go! That’s bordering on abuse, in my book. The back button wouldn’t work and even trying to close the browser window was futile. You made me navigate some complicated pop-up window before I could finally get away. I felt so, so violated!

I don’t think this friendship of ours is going to work out. Like I said, I may not have many friends, but I don’t deserve to be treated this way.

Since it seems we’ve got a relationship built on lies, allow me to tell one of my own:

It’s not you, it’s me.