it’s a strange thing, the internet

You can never truely find out WHO a person really is over the internet. It’s far easier to know someone through their diary than say email or instant messaging, but it is still not completely possible to know someone. It’s odd, in a way, because you find yourself talking to someone that lives thousands of miles away and somehow begin to imagine this person. If you talk to them for awhile you’ll change your image several times as you learn something new about their personality, but still the person will be different from what you expect.

Eventually, if you’re like me you wait awhile, the two people will exchange pictures, which will blow the entire “looks” part of the image you have built up in your head. But the personality you have dreamed up will remain in your head as you pray that the other person has not imagined you to be someone you’re not. I sincerely believe most people don’t try to be something they’re not online, but words themselves can say things that are not meant to be said in a certain context. But there are ways of saying things – the voice inflexions etc – that will completely change their meanings for a person a thousand miles away.

So the two people have exchanged conversations, emails, and pictures. They continue speaking online, but suddenly a person disappears in a way. A person will have had their computer crash and will not be able to log on for what seems like eternity, dying to get on the entire time. That person will log on the first chance they get, and when they do, they’ll find that they’ve lost their buddy list. They will have lost all screen names of people they’ve never met in places they’ve never been. The other person, meanwhile, will see him/her on, but will not think to im them… if they want to talk they’ll im me, right? Besides… where have they been? He/she will have already found a new buddy to talk to – another someone new and exciting to build up images of in their mind.

So the two people never actually talk again, unless the person miraculously remembers the screen name. In this case they im the person to explain things, only to learn that they’ve lost everything they’d built up; there is nothing but a blank messaging box in front of both, and neither has anything to say. The person will find another person just as the first did, and the internet will continue in that endless cycle of meeting people and losing touch.

But you never will know anyone.

@~>~>-dreamergrrl