Behind me in the queue for the cash machine at HSBC on Shaftesbury Avenue, a boy stands with his arm wrapped awkwardly around a girl, more of a half-nelson than an embrace, as though he thinks she might run away.
Did you tell anyone you were meeting me? He has a northern accent.
She is foreign, but I can’t quite place her; her english is good, but musically non-native. I told my friend, but I didn’t give her any details. Just told her I was meeting you.
She has travelled a long way for this first real life meeting with a man who found her on the internet, and she hasn’t let anyone know what she’s doing. Yes she’s in a public place, but one couple in central London, not noticeable or remarkable in any way; who will help her if she gets into difficulties?
Why hasn’t she told anyone? It’s relatively normal now, to make friends online and then meet them in person. Why are people still slightly sheepish about it, when it’s only their own sense of shame that makes the arrangement seedy?
I’ve abandoned my prevarication when asked how I met my boyfriend, and I’m happy to admit that 75% of my social network consists of people I met on the internet. Perhaps if we get a bit more open about it, then the rest of the population will realise that we’re not all geeks and weirdos and potential axe murderers, and then people will be able to be honest about what they’re doing, and make sure someone knows where they’re going.
Because some of us still might be axe murderers.
September 26, 2004
Safecall
I’m not bothered by telling people I met someone on the internet. I’m used to the comments and the remarks when I get them, and I really don’t care any more. I am who I am.
I am slightly bothered by the fact someone I did meet on the internet didn’t like saying that’s where we met. Mainly because her friends and colleagues made fun of her for it. I got bothered by that because initially I thought it was because she was embarrassed by how we met. When I released this wasn’t the case I suppose I got more angry. Why should she be made to feel uncomfortable? Anyway it became a topic that didn’t get discussed. I have noticed that people in London seem to see the internet as more favourable, than people outside London.
I can’t see what the problem is with meeting someone on the net where you get to know them a little at least at first, as opposed to ‘going on the pull’ where you drunk, talk crap with someone and then pull them and try meet for a date afterwards. Yes the internet has it’s problems, but no more so or less so than any other dating medium. Like any other environment where you meet people, just be sensible. It’s no more safe meeting someone off the net than meeting someone you pulled last week in a bar. And lets not forget the sickening amount of date rape drugs being found in general use in bars and clubs.
I noticed I got a slightly strange look from Stuart’s cute friend Julie last night when she asked how I know Stuart and I replied “the internet”. Although the slightly strange looks might have been because I air typed on an air keyboard when I said this, and I got a strange look for Stuart for doing that too. I was thinking though, I don’t actually know Stuart from the internet. I know him from my birthday party. Ok I did meet him at the Christmas Blogmeet last year, but not extensively. I really got to know Stuart when he showed up at my birthday party. Aside from knowing people from school/uni or work, how do we meet people. At parties or friends of friends. And that’s really how I know most of my internet friends, as friends of friends. Just the friends the friends happen to be friends of happen to be on the internet. When I met Krissa, and Heather and Jen in New York, I hadn’t really read their sites. I met them because they were friends of a friend, the friend being Stuart.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m saying any more. I think this comment is now longer than the original post, I apologise. I just know that I am the type of person who quite happily will stand up and be proud I meet people on the internet. I got a great girlfriend out of it and some really decent friends.
Viva The Internet, Viva.
i had been resisting meeting anybody from the internet. people asked and people asked, and i didn’t just say no but hell no. partially because i didn’t understand the impulse, but mostly because a couple girls came and found me. they were about as unbalanced as a one-armed man on the high wire. one was pretty cute, but her pancakes weren’t stacked right.i went up to new york the other week and met a blogger on a whim.
just damn. we had never seen pictures of each other, and we both knew the other immediately.
grinning like idiots. i’m a lot more open to the idea now. hell, i even liked her boyfriend.
Her pancakes weren’t stacked right … I’m not sure if that is a reference to her sanity or to her jubblies.
Sadly, we are all “potential axe murderers”. Fortunately, having the potential to do something is not yet a crime in itself.
But – how do you murder someone with a “potential axe”? I’ve always wondered that.
I’ve met lots of people from t’internet. None of them wore anoraks. None of them had peculiar obsessions about cheese. None of them stalked me for weeks on end and tried to murder me with a potential axe. To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed. So it was just as well they all turned out to be thoroughly nice people.
I think a potential axe is any instrument that has the capacity to split things asunder with the force of a few blows. Thus, potential axe murderers are like your conventional axe murderer, but perhaps more inclined to improvise their weapons. Why persons met on the Internet are likely to proove so ill-equipped to carry out the murders they secretly desire remains a mystery – especially given the time available for them to plan their crimes in advance.
The fact that they’re not carrying axes makes them harder to spot, which is why one ought to be more careful. That said, I cannot see a single item in the room in which I now sit that would make a potential axe.
When arranging to meet people you met via the Internet, don’t leave heavy objects with a sharp edge lying around. That way the potential of most would-be assailants is likely to remain unrealised.
I accept that all dates with people you don’t know very well are hazardous, however I’m referring to the particular stupidity of travelling a long way to an unfamiliar place, to meet someone who could easily have misrepresented him or herself, who is likely to have romantic intentions of some sort.
I’m not, therefore, talking about blogmeets. Most bloggers meet each other in groups, having read their online journals and probably corresponded for quite some time. Of course you could misrepresent yourself through a weblog if you really wanted to, but not as easily as you can in, say, a chatroom.
And if you pull in a nightclub, or you go on a blind date, or you go out with someone you only met last week, the chances are that you WILL tell someone where you’re going and who you are meeting. So if you don’t come back, they know where to start looking. It’s the nature of internet meetings, as Adrian pinpoints above, that means people are ashamed to tell anyone where they’re going. That’s my point.
I totally agree Karen. I just started typing and kind of got carried away.
Anyway I wouldn’t date anyone off the Internet, they’re all wierdos.
Sobering to realize that the majority of the couples I know ‘met’ their partner online. I know all of these people via Adrian.
Bloggers are, and will be, proportionately weighted towards the shy/geek end of the spectrum. I’m not saying A=B, I’m just saying most people do find their partners through the more standard methods (work, clubs, hobbies, friends), and so aren’t used to hearing people met on the internet (although, as noted, it’s becoming more and more common), particularly as the net is a chemistryless medium and most people select thier partner based on an initial ‘Woah’, rather than falling for them over text-flirtation.
I don’t know that anything is worse/better. I frankly am amazed that anyone gets together with anyone and find stories of how people met incredibly interesting, because I have no idea how it works (neither does anyone else, all their stories consist of: “Well, we met online and then…..y’know….” No, of course I don’t know! Would I be asking if I knew?!?), or how anyone finds anyone. Even if I look back on the (two) occasions I found someone, I still don’t know how it happened.
But if people are happy doing it one way or another, power to them- whatever works. Yes, you’ll probably encounter a few wierd looks, but that’s part and parcel of being an interesting person- enjoy it.
There were a lot of ‘So how did you two meet?’ and ‘How do you know each other?’ questions on Saturday.
I think Wild started the air keyboard thing.
We’ve all had the conversation where we try hard and fail to explain adequately what a blog is to someone with no idea but who has a big bundle of preconceptions about the internet.
Trying to encompass that whilst at the same time explaining that I knew of Krissa, read her blog, commented and very rarely emailed her before I met her and we fell in love is very hard, as you get the same dispiriting ‘Oh, on the internet?’ expression combined with increasing surprise because of impending marriage and emigration and whatnot.
Saturday was the first night I’ve not bothered trying to explain away the preconceptions that people listening might have. They were all people I know, anyway, and the people without URLs were in a bit of a minority, it has to be said…
Isn’t that heart-warming? One day, people without URLs will be the minority!
Can you see “Can I have your number” being replaced with “What’s your URL”
No, that’s not heart-warming. It’s frightening.
One of us, One of us, One of us
Understanding is surely to be valued over assimilation. The process by which strangers become acceptable familiars is indeed a peculiar one. The Internet is a means of communication, and it is surely by communicating that strangers become familiars. This should suffice, but to the uninitiated it might also be necessary to explain that whilst the web is a giant message board for child eating deviants it is also the greatest means of free-communication currently available to humankind.
And the alternative does seem to be getting drunk and hoping for the best.
As a historical note, keyboardists (y’know, the musicians) have been making the international sign for ‘I play keyboards’ for several decades, it’s just been co-opted by the blogging fraternity.
My take on it is: hanging out with someone in person transmits a ludicrous amount of information to them- more than you can actually conciously process. Your unconcious takes the majority of the burden and converts the hundreds of facial expressions, subtle movements, tones of voice, scents, the entire range of experiencing someone, into a viable impression of them.
Comparatively, e-mails, texts, phonecalls, transmit a tiny about of information- we all write/talk at slower than concious speeds. In addition to this, everything written is filtered by the writer to give the best impression of themselves, and everything read by the reader will be filtered to take the reading they most want from it. So you have a tiny amount of information, double-filtered by two minds trying to distort reality to thier advantage.
So I don’t think most e-relationships will end in potential-axe murder, but will probably end in one or both of the parties realizing their partner’s online persona bears no resemblance to their real persona, and feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
Which is why I now avoid long distance/e-relationships: They’re largely bollocks.
Destructo-boy.
With the greatest of respect… in relation to the following:
“So I don’t think most e-relationships will end in potential-axe murder, but will probably end in one or both of the parties realizing their partner’s online persona bears no resemblance to their real persona, and feeling incredibly uncomfortable.”
You’re talking shite.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to put your best side forward and we all do it (and please, don’t tell me that people in pubs/clubs/etc. are showing their whole selves off)
I have a pile of friends who I “met” online first, and who are exactly the same whether online or offline.
I had a relationship for nearly 8 years with D, who I originally met online, back when it really was unusual.
People can be freaks and weirdos wherever you meet them – online or off.
Don’t hate the medium, hate the lying nutjobs, wherever they are found.
I didn’t mean any disrespect to you and D, or Adrian and Jose, for that matter. As I said before, whatever works for people- I was just outlining what worked for me.
I stopped qualifying all of my sentences with “In my experience/opinion…” because it started getting annoying to others, and it seemed obvious. I can start again, though.
I didn’t mean to say that people you meet online (or offline) are freaks or wierdos. I meant to say that it’s easier to build a false impression of someone using limited, specifically selected information (e-mails, texts), than it is when actually interacting with them. Citing exceptions to a trend which, to me, seems self-evident, do not make it seem less evident.
I personally have had that experience more times than I have encountered long-distance/e-relationships which have successfully transitioned to “actual” (I’m trying to think of a better word, really) relationships. If I can beat that number in just my own experience, I imagine that for every time that DOESN’T happen, there are probably five times that it does.
You just made a very bold, very solid statement of opinion. But if I’d said what I had just said the first time we met, you would not have responded: “You’re talking shite.” in person. In person, you are very quiet around people you don’t know well- at least, this was my experience of you. So if I had gone to meet you with the notion that you would be like your online self, I’d be wrong- in the context of a romantic interest, this kind of wrongness could be devastating (“I fell for you when I thought you were assertive!”).
I’m not saying that e-ships are doomed to failure. I’m not saying people don’t deceive/filter in person. I’m just saying that on a sliding scale of information, e-ships are at one end, and interacting in person is at the other, and I’d rather be at the interaction end (or, best of both worlds, interacting after work and sending incessant e-mails during work), and would never voluntarily enter a relationship that was confined to the e-ship/LDR end. I would advise any friend who asked to avoid the same, because they can be really, really shitty.
…would never voluntarily enter a relationship that was confined to the e-ship/LDR
Which, I think, brings us full circle, as my original point was about meeting in real life, rather than confining one’s relationship to the internet.
We could go round in these circles for hours, though. If you get off with someone in a club when you’re drunk, then arguably you know less about them than you might if you met in a chatroom. If we’re talking about people who meet through blogging, though, then you’ll probably know a lot about them before you meet, whether you’re planning to have a relationship or not. I wasn’t actually planning to have a relationship with Pete when I met him at the Green Man blogmeet, and in fact I’d assumed that he was a 35 year old married geek, from the nature and tone of the emails he used to send me (and insufficiently thorough reading of his weblog). When he turned out to be a 22 year old unmarried geek, well, you know. Not all misrepresentations are intentional, and not all surprise revelations are unfortunate.
I think we’re confusing the issue here. The web is a form of meeting people, but not necessarily the means of forming or successfully maintaining a releationship. The unnecesary stigma is attached to meeting people via the web, rather than how you actual conduct the relationship having met.
I met my girlfriend on the steps of the Hammersmith Polish Centre when, in an elaborate ruse to get into the club for free, I had to pretend to be her boyfriend.
We did not actually start a relationship until 2 years later and the Intenret played no part in it whatsoever.
“We met on the Internet” would probably be much easier to explain. And I don’t doubt that the steps of the Hammersmith Polish Centre are festooned with murderers, with axes both potential and realised.
I think we’re confusing the issue here. The web is a form of meeting people, but not necessarily the means of forming or successfully maintaining a relationship. The unnecessary stigma is attached to meeting people via the web, rather than how you actual conduct the relationship having met.
Bravo.
I met Jose because I had a website. Although it rapidly progressed, from web to email, to msn, to text to driving up to Liverpool.
After that it was a combination of seeing her, talking to her on the phone, text and email. All normal parts of a relationship as far as I can tell.
I can imagine people two or three generations ago saying
“You’ve only spoken to him on the phone? You didn’t actually meet him first at the social? Oh my god he could be a axe murder. The phone is really bad for relationship”
And people met via snail mail and pen pals long before this Internet jobbie.
Thank you, Pockers. You’re right, we were distracted from my original point, which is inevitable in comments boxes, so never mind.
But in fact, all this distractery has proven my point: there is a stigma attached to internet-meetings, therefore people are less likely to tell friends or family that they are doing it. Hence the danger of a) meeting someone you don’t know well, and b) not being traceable in the event of a problem.
As it becomes more normal to meet people this way, the stigma will be reduced, and consequently so will the danger.
I never think about this subject for long without wondering whether our 15 year old sister, who uses the ‘net constantly for chatting to people, might ever want to meet any of them. And here am I setting a Bad Example. But it wouldn’t be the first one, I suppose.
Had I daughter or sister 15 years of age, I would be absolutely paranoid about her using the net.
Well, I’m hardly an authority on the subject. Adrian, without a doubt, has the smallest online/offline personality differential I have ever encountered, and he’s STILL less dodgy in reality than he is online (though only a little).
In all other cases, and there’ve been many, the differential has ranged from small to extreme (in some cases encompassing gender). Put simply: I don’t believe it until I see it. Adrian has the faith to drive to Liverpool to investigate starting a relationship based on a few online conversations. I don’t. It isn’t anything against people who do, I just don’t do it myself anymore.
I dunno- the thing for 15-year old girls to do in Hamilton was hang out in front of the McDonalds, where they met all sorts of strange and dangerous people, right there in front of them. At least on the `net the strange and dangerous people were seperated by the PC.
I’d educate my daughter about the realities of the world and hope she wasn’t stupid enough to put herself in harm’s way.
I’d educate my daughter about the realities of the world and hope she wasn’t stupid enough to put herself in harm’s way.
And that would be my parenting style, too. Unfortunately, she’s not my daughter, she’s my sister, and the growth of common sense and independent thought is not actively encouraged by her mother.
In some respects, relationships that are confined to the online environment might represent a safer place to learn about how to fall in love and get hurt, than real life.
You just made a very bold, very solid statement of opinion. But if I’d said what I had just said the first time we met, you would not have responded: “You’re talking shite.” in person.
In all likelihood, I might well have. But, since you didn’t offer that opinion at that time, it’s moot.
In person, you are very quiet around people you don’t know well- at least, this was my experience of you.
It may well have been your experience of me, but it was very little to do with not knowing people very well and a lot to do with other stuff which happened to be going on in my life at the time.
Ergo. One experience does not equal full knowledge of that person’s personality.
So if I had gone to meet you with the notion that you would be like your online self, I’d be wrong-
I can see the point you’re trying to make there, but you’re also basing an opinion on one meeting.
in the context of a romantic interest, this kind of wrongness could be devastating (“I fell for you when I thought you were assertive!”).
To hold someone to one facet of their personality strikes me as a little odd.
Would you dump someone who was quiet when you first met them because they turn out to be a raver who was quiet at that time because of a personal tragedy?
It’s a complex subject, but, in my experience, I’ve been able to filter people far easier, and develop closer relationships where there has been a fair amount of non face-to-face interaction, because, to my mind, it’s harder to fake having a personality than it is to fake physical attractiveness.
I do accept that I might also be talking shite, but that’s one of the wonders of this kind of debate – nobody has to be right and nobody has to be wrong, and you can argue all sides til the cows come home.
Meh. I have no responsibilities here whatsoever.
Julie was seriously cute though, and obviously highly intelligent to spot Adrian for a weirdo immediately.
Typing into the void here three days late I realise…