Please, be real!

The moral of THIS story is… BE YOURSELF! Not what you think people will like you for, not what you think will make people do what you want them to do, just who you are.You probably think I sound like a raving weirdo but but seriously, the longer I’m on the internet the more I realize just how screwed up it all really is. It still shocks the shit out of me when I learn just how little I know about the people I talk to.

Lets have a look at my track record:

• It’s the year 2000 and I’m playing the game Ultima Online pretty regularly. Escaping from the depression and lonliness that is starting to set in from my new European life. I meet a boy, he’s 18 years old and I sort of take him in like a little brother. We play the game together with our friends, he talks to me about his life and about girls. I try to advise him the best I can and be a good friend. He talks about coming to visit me and my husband, I phone him on x-mas and his birthday, etc. Then *POOF* he’s gone. A few months go by and I get worried. I still have his phone number and when I call I get his grandfather on the phone. That boy is in PRISON for CHILD MOLESTATION!! YES, he’s in prison for molesting his sister. Needless to say, I was shocked and sad, not to mention completely freaked out. I lost that number and never contacted him again, obviously.
• It’s 2003 (Possibly late 2002) and I’m now playing Dark Age of Camelot. I meet a guy who I find really fun to talk to, we get close and hang out a lot online. He’s 25, from New York and his name is M***, he works for an insurance company and is just mr Rico Suave. Approximately 1.5 years later, I learn the only thing he really told the truth about was where he’s from. He’s really 18 years old, from New York and his name is W****, his carreer was also fictional. Ok so he’s no child molester (that I know of) but he still lied, and lied a LOT!

There is more of course, women playing the poor victim of some abusive husband so she can get all the geeky boys to play an emotional knight in shining armor for her. Men who will tell you anything and act like your best friend when really they are just cyber casanovas. The more popular the internet is getting the harder it’s getting to weed out the REAL people. The ones who are honest about who they are, what they do, what they want, why they are here, and so on. Is it just me who notices this? Am I the only one who is becoming jaded about this online community we share?

Don’t get me wrong, as I said I’ve been guilty of this as well… For a long time when I was first here in Holland I pretended it was dreamy. I told people back home how awesome it was living here, like I didn’t have a complaint in the world. I’ve done the picture cropping to hide my enormous ass. I have never purposely decieved people though, trying to make them think I am something I’m not to gain their friendship or adoration.

When people talk to me, I have no problem saying “Uh yeah I’m chubby!” or “Yup I have my issues”. If I get closer to these people I even let them see my big butt or tell them what my issues actually are. I’m me, that’s it, take it or leave it! Sure I have my insecurities like everyone else, I mean I hardly FLAUNT my big ass pictures but at the same time I don’t lie about the fact that I HAVE one! Am I the only person who would rather be disliked for the person I am, than liked for the illusions I have built up in other people’s minds?

Am I the only person who thinks that true strength is acknowledging and accepting your flaws, rather than denying you have any? What is to be gained by having “friends” that are only your friends because of the lies you’ve told them? How can someone feel good about themselves when they know that what people like about them isn’t even real, that it’s just fiction??

Are internet communities just another twisted form of high school? Where you have to fit a certain mold or otherwise you’re an outcast? Whether it is gaming communities with the boys feeling the need to be the biggest d00d who cares about others the least, or social communities where you have to be the perkiest and most flirty chick who shows her cleavage the most to thrive, does it all just boil down to the same thing? Are we just reliving high school over and over again with each social circle we encounter online? Are our friendships as superficial as they were when we were young and immature, when we would have different friends from one day to the next and drop them over even the most trivial of things?

Please, tell me… where do the REAL people hang out?