So I’ve been on BARQ since discovering it a few years ago (roughly a few months after it launched) and had a few random conversations through it but never did much on it since there wasn’t that many people on it period, let alone within distance of me to be useful as it’s intended dating purposes.
All of a sudden, though, I am getting hella random friend requests on Discord all saying they got my link from BARQ and talking in a way I am all too familiar with seeing from scams on Tinder and other mainstream dating apps. Like, the first time I started talking to them and it seemed normal at first but then I mentioned getting diagnosed with autism a few years ago and they respond with “I hope you get well soon.” So I ask if they are local and they say “Totally. What about you?”
Am I just that socially fucked up or are these not normal responses to these things? What the fuck do you mean am I also local? How do you not know that autism isn’t just something you have for a few days like a cold?
Definitely sounds like scam bots, but I don’t personally have any experience with barq. I’d say that it’s possible they didn’t even get your discord from barq in the first place, but that they just hit large numbers of discord users with barq as pretext
I’ve seen a general increase of scammers targeting furries, primarily with taking art commissions that they very likely won’t fulfill at all (or maybe throw some ai gen thing at you, dunno). I think the furry community has just grown enough out of obscurity to be targeted more, and that probably includes barq.
I have set my socials to only be visible to mutuals, which seems to have prevented the spam you’re experiencing.
I probably wouldn’t put my socials on BARQ.
