A sus­pected DAMES agent. Note head­scarf. Photo cc Tim­o­thy Wells

THE QUESTION: What is DAMES?
–F., New York

THE ANSWER:
DAMES is an inter­na­tional con­spir­acy of beau­ti­ful women com­mit­ted to the destruc­tion of EDW Lynch. Their cam­paign has been under­way since my junior prom in 1999.

DAMES is an acronym for the Direc­torate of Adorable Madamoi­selles Excelling in Seduc­tion. They wear no uni­forms though often­times are equipped with leg­warm­ers and short pixie-like hair. Much has been said of the large pro­por­tion of Asian or part-Asian mem­bers, but this by no means is a requirement.

The pri­mary goal of DAMES is to con­fuse, demor­al­ize, and frus­trate EDW Lynch by any means nec­es­sary. Adorable­ness is used as a weapon to achieve this goal. Con­fus­ingly ambigu­ous state­ments and non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tions (e. g. “mixed sig­nals”) pro­vide a psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare ele­ment that has been par­tic­u­larly effec­tive against the man­glom­er­ate in the past. Let’s Just Be Friends ambushes are another fre­quent tactic.

Recent oper­a­tions have been designed to encour­age EDW Lynch to cause moments of awk­ward­ness in social sit­u­a­tions, after which the DAMES agent no longer returns phone calls or text mes­sages. Sus­pected DAMES agents have been detected at San Francisco’s Dolores Park, local bars, cafés and at Beirut concerts.

To date, DAMES has not issued any demands or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the actions of its agents. Occa­sion­ally spokes­women for the direc­torate have made vague state­ments regard­ing how EDW Lynch “should know why we’re mad,” but no fur­ther expla­na­tion has ever been offered.

It remains the offi­cial pol­icy of EDW Lynch that we do not nego­ti­ate with DAMES.

We made a brief state­ment about DAMES dur­ing a recent press con­fer­ence regard­ing a Let’s Just Be Friends inci­dent.

EDW Lynch

DICTATED BUT NOT READ

SAN FRANCISCO– EDW Lynch dis­closed a “Let’s Just Be Friends” (LJBF) inci­dent at a tele­vised press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, end­ing spec­u­la­tion by the inter­na­tional press regard­ing a series of Moment of Awk­ward­ness (MOA) alerts that occurred the pre­ced­ing Sun­day. The text of the press release is below and the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment can also be found here.

On the evening of Sun­day, May 23rd, EDW Lynch was present at a roman­tic eval­u­a­tion meet­ing or “Date” with a young woman “Erica K,” who was con­sid­ered by this com­pany to be a poten­tial roman­tic oppor­tu­nity. At 7:32pm pacific day­light time, Erica issued a state­ment of “Let’s Just Be Friends” to EDW Lynch. In line with com­pany pol­icy, her account with our dat­ing depart­ment has been closed.

EDW Lynch is dis­clos­ing this inci­dent pur­suant of com­pany pol­icy, and for the ben­e­fit of our stake­hold­ers and the pub­lic. This LJBF dis­clo­sure is not cause for con­cern, and falls well within our roman­tic pro­jec­tions for this fis­cal year.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion, the press con­tact is Social Resources Czar T. Argyle Funston-Nakamoto, social­re­sources at edwlynch.com