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'Psst, let me tell you about that jerk, that creep, that...'

A North Oaks man has created a big shoulder to cry on with a Web site that lets people vent about ex-lovers who did them wrong. He hopes the site does right by him financially.

By EMILY NIPPS
Published September 15, 2006

Jason Prentice has weathered the funny looks from people driving by 42nd Street, the drunken party crowd in Ybor City and the property managers who think he's trespassing on their sidewalks.

The huge neon green sign he carries and the cards he passes out on the street are all part of a crusade to get people talking about their exes on his Web site, www.talkingex.com. Enough people have noticed his sign or slogan on his cards, which says, "An Ex Is An Ex For A Reason," to log onto his site and fill eight pages of not-so-nice biographies on their ex-loves.

"It's a safeguard for people in the dating world," said Prentice, a 36-year-old health administrator at University Community Hospital. "You just never know what someone is like behind closed doors. This is a way for people to express the good, the bad and the ugly."

So far, there appears to be more bad and ugly than good on talkingex.com. The stories, which fall under people's full names, ages and other personal information, range from the humdrum "Everything was going great, then he said he needed space ... " to the horrible ("CLOSET CRACKHEAD AND A THIEF!"). There is also a way to upload photos of the offending exes, though no one has posted one yet.

Prentice, who is originally from the Virgin Islands and moved to Florida after Hurricane Hugo hit the islands in 1989, hopes he and his fiancee, Michelle, can eventually retire from their jobs and live off the Web site's advertising revenue.

It's not his first entrepreneurial venture, as he began selling underwater cameras as a boy and later started his own telephone wiring company before business slowed and he took a job at UCH six years ago.

He said he got the idea one night while he was watching TV's Entertainment Tonight and noticed that the gossip on the show was "always something about somebody split up with somebody, over and over again."

He figured there was a big enough market out there of jilted lovers who needed someplace to vent.

The concept isn't new, however. The most well-known online public forum dedicated to warning others about bad exes or dates is www.dontdatehimgirl.com, which has close to 17,000 bios.

The site, created by a 34-year-old Miami woman named Tasha Joseph about eight months ago, has been wildly successful and gets traffic from all over the world.

Joseph, who recently married, was recently a guest on a Dr. Phil segment (which airs on Sept. 20) and has been sued by a Pittsburgh man who claims the site's posts about him, including one that says he has a sexually transmitted disease, have ruined his reputation.

Toss Hollis, who is a criminal defense attorney, also named two women who allegedly created some of the posts in his defamation suit, which has a hearing scheduled for Oct. 19. "I'm confident we're going to be dismissed from the case," said Joseph, who called the suit "frivolous."

There are laws that apply to online forums such as dontdatehimgirl.com and talkingex.com or personal blogs that prevent people from posting others' private information (such as Social Security numbers or medical records) or libelous statements.

But bloggers and posters also have the right to post anonymously and under the umbrella of free speech laws. The Communications Decency Act protects Internet service providers and online forum hosts from being sued over what others post on their sites.

It also opens the door to a whole different breed of online forums, for better or worse.

"The Internet is still new and people are really pushing the boundaries," said Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties association. "It's a learning curve, not just for what is legal, but what is the etiquette here."

Joseph said she has seen a lot of people imitate dontdatehimgirl.com, which she originally started as a forum for her girlfriends, but the imitators usually aren't successful. She doesn't expect talkingex.com to last.

"A lot of people try to ride on our coattails but they usually peter out after a few days," she said. "I don't think this guy's going to have any success, so I hope he doesn't quit his day job."

Prentice thinks his site differs from dontdatehimgirl.com, though.

For starters, it's open to men and women of any orientation, and he claims the sole purpose is not just to uncover bad truths about people. People can post good things, too, and a couple of posters have.

"The difference is, I'm not telling you what to do or what not to do," he said.

The traffic has slowly been trickling in, and Prentice expects his hard work and occasional hassles to pay off.

A property manager at Breckinridge Apartments confronted him last week when he was standing along 42nd Street in front of the complex, so he moved across the street with his sign.

He also has been approached by police in Ybor City, who told him he cannot hand out cards, yet he persists because he feels he is reaching a prime demographic there.

He recently handed out 50 cards and only four wound up on the ground - "a good sign," he said. And he loves the reaction and double-takes he gets from those passing him on the street.

On a recent Friday morning, a driver sped past the "An Ex Is An Ex For A Reason" sign and obviously felt the same way. The driver honked his horn and yelled out, "Woo-hoo!"

"See?" Prentice said. "It's catchy."

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Emily Nipps can be reached at (813) 269-5313 or nipps@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 14, 2006, 12:59:01]