So you’ve been in an online relationship for a few months now, and things seem to be going well. The conversation is electric, your broadband connection is faster than ever, and the cybersex is out-of-this-world good. But the terrible question remains: how can you be sure that the girl you’ve fallen for is actually a girl?

Now this might seem like a silly question. I mean, come on, she chats like a girl, she says she’s a girl, she sent you nude pics of herself that were indisputably of a girl. She even said you couldn’t have cybersex this one time because she was on her period. And last time you checked, guys generally don’t have periods.

But how do you know it’s really her in those photographs? Hell, any old idiot could do a Google image search for “hot boobs women” and send you one of the more believable results. Why in the world would he do this, you ask? Because he’s a repressed homosexual who wants to make other men feel gay so he can call them “fags,” or because he has a hilarious sense of humor, or maybe because, like you, he’s just really goddamn lonely.

So to help you determine whether or not your beautiful electronic girlfriend is in fact an electronic boyfriend—or a machine, because I actually dated this one girl online for about a year and a half before I figured out she was just a moderately sophisticated computer program—I’ve put together some questions you should ask her, the answers to which will tell you for sure what kind of creature you’re dealing with.

Ask her what a USB port is.

Girls don’t know a whole lot about technology, I’ll admit, but most guys think that girls know absolutely nothing about it. So if your online girlfriend seems conspicuously uninformed on the subject—if she answers, “Now why would a little totally female thing like me have a clue about anything so downright manly?”—then I’m sorry, but you’re talking to a guy who’s trying to conceal what is probably a depressing store of computer knowledge he’s accumulated over many lonely years.

If, on the other hand, she tells you about the evolution of the USB port from the zip drive, or her answer includes the words “firewire” or “interface,” then you’re talking to a guy who’s too dumb—or, more likely, too sexually excited by your computer-related question—to hide his tech savvy.

What you’re looking for is a short, uninterested answer that seems neither too accurate nor too clueless, such as, “I don’t know, it’s where you plug stuff in.” Or something callous and belittling, like “I told you a thousand times I’m only looking for a physical relationship”—and by “physical,” she means virtual touching and electronic caressing—“so cut the USB shit and tell me what you’re wearing, you little pussy.”

Ask her if she prefers “Seinfeld” or “Friends.”

If she picks “Friends,” then congratulations—it’s a girl. If she picks “Seinfeld,” it’s a guy. It’s that simple. Unless of course it’s a guy who for some God-forsaken reason happens to prefer “Friends,” or a girl who likes “Seinfeld” a lot.

If she says she doesn’t really like either show, but she thinks “According to Jim” is pretty funny, then you’re probably talking to an undercover cop who’s trying to entice pedophiles—for fun, on his own time, not for the job—or a victim of a botched sex-change operation. Either way, you should probably jump ship, unless you feel a really deep spiritual connection with this person, which you probably will.

Ask her what her favorite movie is.

If she chooses some stereotypical chick flick—The Notebook, or A Walk to Remember, or Blue Velvet—then you can be sure it’s a guy trying to pull a fast one on you.  

A real girl will choose either Slumdog Millionaire or Operation Dumbo Drop and nothing else. Not because she likes either of those movies—no, she actually thought Slumdog was lacking in substance and Dumbo Drop was too bleak—but because she thinks that’s what you want to hear. She’ll tell you, “Slumdog is our generation’s answer to Operation Dumbo Drop.” And while this is true, she won’t really believe a word of it.   

Ask her what her privates smell like.

If she dignifies this question with a response, then you can be sure you’re talking to a man. A real woman will evade the question or even break up with you for asking it. So before you ask her this, you should ask yourself—is finding out that your online girlfriend is really a girl worth the cost of losing her forever? I say yes, absolutely, but less informed others may disagree.

Now of course there must be some exceptions to these general rules—there might be a lonely, suicidal girl somewhere in the Midwest who knows a ton about USB ports, or an old woman on her deathbed who insists that her favorite movie is Stripes. But if your online girlfriend knows more than you do about USB ports, and prefers “Seinfeld” to “Friends,” and says her favorite movie is neither Slumdog nor Dumbo Drop, and tells you her privates smell like cocoa, then I think it’s safe to say you’re dating a man.  

Which doesn’t mean that you should end things, necessarily. Because in an electronic relationship, dating a man who’s posing as a woman isn’t really so different from dating a real live woman. In fact, the main difference I can think of is that you’ll have more in common and hence more things to talk about with the man. The cybersex will be the same—that is, phenomenal—the emotional investment will be the same—that is, pitiful—and the oppressive loneliness will, alas, be the same.

Of course, your relationship would basically be one massive lie. But tell me, what relationship isn’t?