After a long day in the Af-Pak reporting doldrums with soulkilling layovers in teabaggery, I finally have time to read Doree Shafrir’s epic New York Observer profile of Keri Farrell, a piece of journalism so epoch-defining it rivals Angela Valdez’s classic descent into the blackened soul of Late Night Shots. Basically, a sociopathic felon becomes a real-life vagina dentata to Brooklyn hipsters, grifting them out of cash, favors and self-respect through a tattoo-enhanced repertoire of sexualized attention, faked pregnancies and 24-hour bouts of cancer. She’s wanted in Utah for stealing $60,000. Read the story.

Most revealing is what Farrell’s manboy love association reveals about her prey. For instance, Bobby, a 23 year old Rutgiz student, who wasn’t sure what to do when he learned she had "cancer."

Bobby talked it over with some friends. “Basically, the consensus was to stick around because you like this girl, but don’t get too attached, because she’s going to be dead in three months,” Bobby said.

Well goddamn if that doesn’t sum up what it’s like to be a 23-year old dude. Part of Bobby — some primal, inarticulate base force — clearly viewed that situation as a win-win, like a self-cleaning oven or a Roomba. This is how Ferrell is able to parade such glaring, obvious inconsistencies with her cover story — "I thought it was really strange that if she was dying of lung cancer, she’d be smoking pot" — and still take Bobby’s money.

Then there’s Hamilton Nolan from Gawker, whom Farrell didn’t grift. But he gives up the ghost in an even better way. Fixating on this part of the story —

“She has this thing with guys where she talks about sex really upfront and kind of puts people off balance,” said Joe. (It was also around November that a guy named Troy was at Union Pool, the Williamsburg bar, when the bartender passed him a note from another customer. It read, “I want to give you a hand job with my mouth,” and was signed “Korean Abdul-Jabbar.” It was, according to Troy, from Ms. Ferrell. Another time, a patron at Fabiane’s, the café on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, said Ms. Ferrell passed him a note which read: “I want you to throw a hot dog down my hall.”)

 – he remarks:

Now there’s nothing wrong with that in the context of a loving, honest, one night stand, but this girl was just trying to manipulate people. 

Capps can tell you that I laughed at this for five straight minutes. Nolan either has an impressively arch sensibility or has just asked an empty sky why he might, in the future, be made to suffer for the pursuit of his dreams.

Farrell’s keen understanding of menboys is hardly the only part of her trail of disaster. She fooled women too, although it appears that she did less damage to them — little of it financial — perhaps out of a cautious understanding that women were less likely to take the bait. But what she reveals about men is a warning sign, gentlemen, like a sexual-manipulation USS Cole or Maersk Alabama signpost for how your soft, perpetual-adolescent underbelly will be exploited. Change your ways or harden your defenses. Farrell’s choice of prey makes her a maddeningly respect-worthy predator, in spite of all better judgment.