by ChristianC » Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:15 pm
Right, this happened to me Last new year's eve, so it's a bit old, but the subject isn't.
I was celebrating new year's eve with my father, his new wife and two of their friends whom I've known for a long time. To you who doesn't know me in Real Life, I can say that I'm very much negative to alcohol consumption in general. Celebrations, yes. Holidays, nope.
Anyway, my father's wife, henceforth called Wife, and the woman friend, henceforth called friend, started discussing how much Wife's kid (not my brother) have been hanging 'round the net lately. Me being the typical economist of the family said that "Tell him the phone bill next time and he might stop." The two looked at me like I was from Mars.
"It's not like that," Wife says and smile. "The money we can afford, but it's not real." Here I nearly choken on some soda. "I mean," Wife continues, "How can he spend hours talking to people on the net?"
Now, Wife is, and I'm not ashamed to say this, a phonaholic, and generally takes to sit for hours and talk with her friends. I pointed this out and she smiled.
"But at least I know who I'm talking too." This made me a bit surprised. Apparently, as long as you know who you're talking too, it's all fine and dandy. The heck, you guys could all be a bunch of serial-killer/rapists(Not that I don't think you are, mind you :D)!
Then came the thing I feared most. "You're often on the net at your mother's, right?" I had to nod. "Isn't it hard to write to people? I mean, you don't know them at all, you've never heard them speak."
"'course I know them. I've been on the board for over two years!"
"Yeah, but you've never met anyone of them, you haven't seen or talked to them. They could be lying straight to your face!"
As you understand, I got a bit frustrated. "Listen, I've got pictures of my friends on the board, I've heard sound-clips, and besides. On the net," Here I made one of my favourite quotes, "it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, it's what you do that counts."
Obviously, this slipped Wife and Friend. "How can you trust they're telling you the truth?"
"Okay," As most of you know, I can get upset/excited easily, and this was one of those moments, "let's say they're all 45+, rapists and murderers. So what? They're fun to hang around with!"
"You don't hang around, you just write to eachother. You can't express emotions in text, you can't make people understand what you mean."
The conversation continued, but after this point there was mainly repeating of the same stuff... Now, is this common? It's not the biggest thing in the world, but it sure shocked me a lot. <p>
<div style="text-align:center">Christian Cordeus - Shamelessly stealing school supplies since 1993.</div></p>