2006-01-25 - 12:12 a.m.

way to overanswer a question there

Way #1 to know you are losing it:

You sign your own guestbook to answer someone who asked a question in your guestbook. About 80 seconds later you get an email saying, "someone just signed your guestbook" and you think ooo! I wonder who signed my guestbook?

This is why you never overhear people walking by me saying, "whoa, check out the attention span on HER."

So, one of the diarists I read raised a couple of related questions. This could be a novel, unless I get tired of writing halfway through...

Question 1 - well it's really two questions. "How comfortable are you at the idea of meeting people from the internet that have read your online diary? If someone from Diaryland suddenly just surprised you and made an appearance at your front door..how would you feel?"

Okay, question 1B first. If someone from Diaryland showed up at my door unannounced, my reaction would be the same as anyone from Anyland who shows up unannounced. I would not be happy. I'm not a drop-in person. There are probably like five people in the world I'd actually be happy to let into my house. There are quite a few others I'd be happy to see, and I would open the door and say, wow, what are you doing here? Then I'd close the door behind me and say, let's go out. But I realize, that's not the actual question being asked.

So, question 1A: Meeting someone who'd been reading my online diary... depends on whether it's someone who is completely unknown to me, or someone who I know has been reading it. I think everyone who I know who reads it also has a diary of their own that I read. Some people go into different degrees of detail about their lives, but at least they're not complete unknowns to me. There is one person who reads it who I've known since long before I was on Diaryland, and one who I knew online before Diaryland. Then there are a few others with whom I've traded comments and emails. I think I'd enjoy meeting them. But please - email first so I can be sure I'm dressed and there's a path cleared so you can get into the house.

However - someone who would just jump up out of the blue and say - in person - hi, you have no idea who I am, but I've been reading your diary? Um. I would not like that. I just went back and added the "in person" to that sentence though, to make that clear - because if I got an email like that, that would be okay - given, of course, that the rest of the email includes an explanation of who the person is, and doesn't involve anything about the shrine to me that they've built in their bedroom, and requests for DNA samples and such. But in person? No.

Reason? The short reason is, I'm a control freak and that would be really freakin scary. But to elaborate: imagine the situation where someone comes up to you and greets you by name, and you know you've never met them (actually, that's happened to me - it turned out really funny, but for a few minutes REALLY freaked me out). Instead of asking, "who are you?" The beautifully etiquette-laden response is, "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage." That's what I don't like. Being at that disadvantage. That's the entire reason I hate "You've Got Mail" and "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," but that's another story. It's the "I know lots of things about you and you know nothing about me" that I don't like. Add in "and I know where you live" and that's just scary.

But, question 2, which again is two questions: "Have you met someone from the internet? If not, How do you feel about the idea of meeting someone that reads your online diary?"

Well, for 2B, see above. But, (maybe) surprisingly, the answer to 2A is, shyeah. Frazillions of 'em. When I was much younger, in the days before the World Wide Web (no, 100% seriously), I used to have pen pals. I actually met a couple of them in person. And actually, this is kind of like the two situations above. One girl that I met was someone I'd been writing for a long time, and we'd write letters that were pages and pages and pages long, and once we met, we felt like we'd known each other forever. The other girl, we'd exchanged a couple of letters, and suddenly she announced she wanted to come visit, and exactly when, and she'd stay over, and we could exchange articles and tapes and stuff on this musician we both liked (which of course was her true reason for the visit). Why I didn't say, um, NO - is quite beyond me. I was in my late teens at the time, and I asked my parents if it was okay, and they said yes. It was weird. After she visited we kind of slowly stopped writing, and that's all there was to that.

Then came the internet. When I first got online (on a network called Qlink) I was pretty active on the boards and some of the chat rooms, so I met a lot of people online. Here are some examples of people that I knew online but never in person (so, I'm digressing):

One guy I got along with instantly. It was never more than flirty friends, but we traded phone numbers and addresses, and traded photos, and talked on the phone a couple of times. I lost touch with him, then actually found him again a few years later and traded a couple of emails, then lost touch again. He's someone I wouldn't mind hearing from again.

One guy I talked to a bit in the chat rooms, and he found out I collected frog stuff. He said he was about to take a trip to Puerto Rico and that frogs were like the national animal or something (??? didn't make any more sense to me at the time than it does now) and he wanted to send me a postcard with a frog on it so could he have my address? Idiot me - SURE. A few days later I get... not a postcard... a box. A box about twice as big as a shoebox. And when I open it... frogs. Not real ones, thank goodness, but still creepy enough. Several dozen frogs. Ceramic ones, plastic ones, little plush ones, just all kinds. Mostly cheap souvenir type stuff, but the sheer volume was just... creepy. My parents were like - WHO is this from again? I told them and got a decent little lecture about giving out my address to people I don't know. I was in my early 20s by then but MAN was I glad to still be living with my parents. When the guy got back home and began emailing me with stuff that, while still PG, definitely indicated that he would like to change that rating, you may be sure that I reminded this guy that hey, this address you have, my parents live here you know, and by the way did I tell you my dad's a policeman? Oh I did, good. I also did tell the guy - hey - that's, uh, nice of you and all, but you are obviously way more into this (whatever "this" is) than I am so we just should stop talking, oh, and by the way dude, YOU ARE MARRIED. He tried to convince me that it was all okay because the internet was a land of imagination where anything could be okay and I'm like you know, this big box of frogs doesn't so much look like imagination to me, so, don't mean to be rude but BYE.

This is when I stopped giving out my address.

No one ever showed up on my doorstep unannounced, thank goodness, but that did happen to someone else I knew on that same network. Luckily she still lived with her parents too, and her dad scared the guy off (very much with her permission). We're both just lucky the guys in question gave up without turning really seriously psycho.

On the other (non-psycho) hand.

I met a lot of other people online that I never did meet in person, who were nice and whose friendship I enjoyed. And even some in person.

One woman I knew online I ended up meeting in person after I moved and was suddenly living one town over from her. We were friends in person for a long time before we kind of grew apart. Nothing bad happened though and she was a good friend.

I am on tons of online boards and mailing lists now, mostly to do with my band, and I've met tons of people from online. A lot of them recognize my name or screen name when we introduce ourselves, and to a much smaller extent, it's a little like the scenario I was talking about before where someone knows exactly who I am because I post a lot, but I have no idea who they are because they're a lurker. But it's not as scary because it's not someone who reads a "diary" of mine - I know that everything they've read is something I posted on a public list, which I knew would be read by hundreds of people I didn't know. So I know they don't know anything about me that I haven't intentionally made public. (As opposed this super-private ONLINE DIARY... yes yes I know.) But that's okay.

With many of them, we introduce ourselves, and talk for a few minutes and that's it. It's pretty cool though when I also recognize their name or screen name, and it's "putting a face to a name" and it's like meeting someone you already know. THERE, I guess, is the difference I was talking about above - the difference between "meeting" a stranger who knows about you, and "meeting" someone you know, just from another arena.

Some of them, of course, are people that I "know" online and know that I don't like. I'm polite and try not to get entangled.

Some of them are people I didn't "know" so I'll talk to them for a while... and it becomes horribly clear that I do not WANT to know them. This is when you try to get disentangled. It's not easy sometimes.

Then there's the pleasant experience of "meeting" someone and finding the more we talk that we think alike and have fun passing time together. I've mentioned before that out of my "band friends," there are really only two people I'm totally comfortable traveling with - which means, spending extended time with. (There's also my sister, but she's in a different category than "band friend," you understand.) There's another who I'm that comfortable with, but she travels with her husband, so the traveling part is out. There's one more who comes close, and I do actually sometimes travel with her and I love her to death, I just can't totally relax around her because she keeps a secret like I don't use credit cards. Point being, those four people are among the top ten people I'm closest to - and I met all four of them online, less than five years ago.

Then there's another person, and I just realized she's my "oldest" friend in terms of she's the person I've known the longest (outside of family), who I'm friends with now. That may freak her out a little. I'm not someone who had high school friendships that lasted though, so, there you go. I met her online probably in 1995 or 1996, and met her in person in 2000. I won't give her name here but she can out herself if she likes (although just saying that kind of outs her). It was weird meeting someone in person who I'd known online for so long. I was so nervous. When we met I felt like I was such an idiot insecure moron klutz doofus. But she still talks to me. If she realized I was a total loser and is still talking to me just to be polite, that's an AWFUL lot of polite.

To me, the internet is just a place. I've always said that. When people say, "Oh, you have to be careful meeting people on the internet! There are weirdos there!" I say, so, I should meet people where instead? In a bar where there are no weirdos? In line at the supermarket? At work? At church? If I may paraphrase the Wizard of Oz (because hell, why set parameters for rambling at this point): "Some place where there aren't any weirdos. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto?"

The internet is just a place. There are nice people. There are dangerous people. Funny people. Brilliant people. Stupid people. Helpful people. Mean people. Crazy people. People who are every possible mixture of those. You have to be careful. Just like any place that has people. The one thing that is a bit more dangerous about the internet is that someone can claim to be, say, a 12-year-old girl, and online you believe it, whereas in person you'd know it's a 45-year-old man. But when people say, "You can't trust anyone online! He could be married - he could be a serial killer!" What, and that cute guy you met at the bus stop couldn't be?

The nice thing about the internet though, is that you get to look at people differently. When you meet someone, you form a first impression. In person, it can be based greatly on the person's appearance. Online, you sometimes don't even know if a person is male or female when you first meet (a/s/l is one reason I'm out of chat rooms for the rest of my life. If you have to know that before you talk to me, I probably am not interested in talking to you). Online, of course you still form a first impression, but it's based on common interest, similar sense of humor - or an interesting screen name. Sometimes, of course, people will just put on an act, but again - like that doesn't happen offline?

Oh yeah and then there's my husband. Met him online in spring of 1988. Chatted & emailed and got to know each other, then after a few months, we started talking on the phone. That was an odd transition - you feel like you know someone so well online, and then suddenly there's this voice on the phone you totally don't know. Takes a while to merge those two in your mind. A few months more, and we decided we should meet "in real life." We traded photos first - accurate ones - mostly in self defense, in my case. Just in case there was going to be an "OH - nice to meet you, but you know what, something suddenly came up" based on appearance, I wouldn't have to go through that in person. Then we met in person and that was another VERY odd transition - I'd gotten to know him really well online and over the phone (yes, no matter what anyone says, that is possible) and then suddenly standing in front of me is this total stranger, who knows all these things about me, but who is he? I've never seen him before! But then you talk... and oh yeah... okay I know who this is... and again you make that connection in your mind. Anyway so far so good there, we moved in together in 1989, got married in 1992, and more days than not I still like him. Yeah, he's a weirdo, but that's not because he came from online. I don't think.

Anyway, sort of back to the point... the "diary," I think is the part that skews all this. I'm very quiet at first around new people. I'm very slow to share any sort of information about myself. That goes for my "public" online self as well. But in a diary... well, you're just sitting around ranting and rambling when people first meet you. And you don't really know who's "listening." You know "people" are... but not which specific people. When you meet one, it's unsettling. Gives you a small idea of how celebrities must feel, with all those people out there who think they know them...

Am I done? Yeah, I think I am.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -