RSSReminds me of a certain experience
Dec 06
In this post Clair touches up on the issue of Internet personas. The cardinal rule with Internet communication is that do not take everything at face value. This is especially true for those who think they can use Internet as another means of hooking up. Internet relationships do happen but they are as rare as love at first sights and long distance romances. But forever Internet cassanova wannabe, there are 3 Internet con artists. 🙂
During my first few years of connectivity (around ’96-’97 I tink), I was enganged in IRC. I was fascinated in how I was able to communicate with people around the country and around the world (those were the days that shaped my current Internet handle because frenzy and ramrod keeps getting registered by somebody else, 😀 ). I never did IRC with the intention of hooking up, I was already smitten with the woman who is now my wife. I just liked being in IRC and letting my Internet persona out into the world. The introvert and meek me had a taste of confidence behind the privacy provided by online communication. Some might call it a cowardice but that is your privilege. 🙂 I hanged out in #manilastars and got acquainted with a few midnight chatters. I felt good hanging out with them electronically, even if I only saw three of them in real life (and that was after I quit IRC, and I met them because of my brother who was still into IRC waaay afterI am done).
Anyway, there was a certain chatter who used the nick ‘jing’ with some numbers that I cant remember now. She said she was from the USA, and she even had a homepage. Come to think of it I tried to create my first website on that same provider and there I found out that I have absolutely no skill for web authoring because I am artistically-handicapped :D. Back to jing, she was a looker but I treated her as an ‘Ate’ because she was half a decade older than me. She confided some things and me and although I have little to confid eI did so from time to time. Being a looker a lot of people tried to hit on her, people who are certified Cassanovas and Romeos… wannabes. It was so pathetic I found it amusing that people would do such acts as if it was taken out of a cheap jokebook of bad come-on liners.
Eventually #manilastars disbanded, and I lost interest in IRC as I was then interested in BBS-ing. One day my brother told me a ‘shocking’ news, somebody tracked ‘jing’ and found out she was a he. Some of the wannabes was said to be very angry for being taken for a fool. I did not care because even if jing was a he, he was a good conversationalist and I will always think of ‘jing’ as an ‘Ate’. I already created a persona behind the nick, and I lose nothing if I continue on with the charade. But that was one of the things that taught me to view things in the Internet with a grain of salt. 🙂
ciao!