Forthnights

Chatting anyone?

Is it possible to call someone your soul-mate even if you’ve never met them? Is REALLY possible to have an online/distant relationship with someone you haven’t even met in your life? What are all this stories of people meeting online and eventually getting married all about? People who profess to have found their soul mate or life partner online, even if they haven’t met them? How many people out there have actually went out and meet the people they know through the internet? How many of the people you get to know online have you met? I’m curious to know the statistics.

Do you consider your online friends true/real friends?

Meaning, do you consider someone that you’ve never met before a friend of yours? Or is he/she merely an online friend? Which brings me to another question.

Do you need to meet a person before calling them a friend?

I think that we already have enough on our hands trying to figure out which among the people around us are our true friends, let alone trying to figure out about someone we’ve never even met.

In all of these years of my online life, the majority of people that I chat with are the people that I know personally. I have never understood how people enjoy random chats on mIRC etc without having anywhere or anything to begin with. What do you chat about? What do you say? Even worse, what are you NOT supposed to say? We are supposed to be careful and not share too much details with strangers, but how are we ever supposed to have a meaningful conversation without ever disclosing something intimate? How are we supposed to know if the other person is also being honest? The few times that I have attempted to have a random online conversation, I either ran out of things to say in the first 5 lines or found myself lying profusely about my interest etc. Strange?

Of course, these have been a few minor exceptions.

For example:

I started chatting with this person through ICQ. Lived in Damansara. Apparently from a loaded family with lots of freedom and little friends. This was way back in Form 4 by the way. So we chatted on almost a daily basis, and before I could even make a move, this gal offered to chat on the phone. I was like “Hmmm, why not, after all who knows what could happen. I’m single, so is she right?” So we exchanged numbers and talked on the phone, and for quite a long time too. It’s a little strange sometimes how we can talk for hours with a new friend but struggle to find things to say to other good friends that we have known for a long time. But I digress.

We exchanged all sorts of stories about our lives, and things seemed genuinely well. We got along well, could chat about many things, both were English speaking a.k.a Bananas and felt comfortable talking to each other. She told me about her beautiful friend who was good looking enough to be a model, about her lesbian sister in New Zealand, about her friends accidentally flashing their breast while playing pool, about her stumbling across her father’s pornographic vcd collecting blah blah blah…. So one day we decided to take the next step and meet each other, but not alone. I brought my buddy Saiful with me and we were supposed to meet at PJ at some Charity Carnival in a Church. I was kind of nervous. After all, you never know how things could turn out right? I mean, this could be my future happiness at stake! :-p She was available, spoke good English, nice to talk to and (from her picture) reasonably good looking. Plus she was very straight forward and honest, something I appreciate.

So arriving at the place, I couldn’t really find her and gave her a call. As she my sight to where she was standing, I saw her. Confusing, shock, guilt, anger and embarrassment all set in. As I walked over to them, I was part hoping that I got the wrong person or that I’d wake up any moment from a very bad dream. I could see the smirk/about to burst out in laughter look on my friends face! Now, I don’t want to sound shallow or anything, but this wasn’t totally what I had in mind. I wasn’t expecting a Ms World look-a-like. I merely expected her to look like what I saw in the photo. Average looking, medium built. But this person in front of me was HUGE! As tall as I was, and almost surely, bigger built than me! What was worse, she wore tight fitting cloths so as to accentuate her bountiful curves! When she said she was of medium built, I didn’t know it meant BIG!

She introduced me to her friends, all of whom shared a similar look (read: also big!) and when she introduced me to her ‘good looking enough to be a model’ best friend, I almost fell flat on the ground. I didn’t know she was referring to plus sized models. Now, just to stress that I’m not a pig head, I do have plus sized women friends, many whom I enjoy talking to, but in this case I felt somehow misled. From the picture she sent and the things that she spoke about herself, this wasn’t what I expected. I felt misled because I was totally honest with her about myself plus my physical flaws, but I couldn’t help but feel that she conveniently left out a few details about herself! The picture she sent was only face level and what was all the stories about all the guys that we going after her and her friend?

But after that, I did continue talking to her online and even went out with her and her friend for a movie and drink. But after that, I kind of lost heart and the calls got lesser and lesser and the online chats eventually stopped. Does that make me a pig? Male chauvinist? Shallow? I don’t know. But I certainly felt misled!


So back to my original questions, to me the internet is surely a great way to meet new people. It’s refreshing to talk to someone new, provided that they are sincere and honest, which I think is rare. I get the impression that in the chatting circles, majority are men, trying to find girl to get lucky with, or just interested in talking sex, and in return, the number of approachable women on the net are lesser, having learnt from experience. I certainly am not interested in talking to a guy (stranger) randomly on the net, unless there is a clear common interest. I would only consider someone a friend if, at the very minimum, I have met them and know them personally to but a face to a name.

posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 11:10 pm Comments: 0