Time for me to come clean. When I was in middle school I ran something called a Bulletin Board System, or BBS. Here's the deal - before the world wide web there were people called System Operators, or SysOps, who would leave their computers on 24/7 and hook them up to a phone line. Then some other people would dial in to the computer, leave messages for other users, play some turn-based online games, maybe chat with the SysOp if he were around, and then log off and dial another BBS.
It was all done over phone lines with super slow modems and all text based, so nothing very exciting. (Though some people got really good at drawing ASCII art.) I "BBSed" enough that I had started writing an introductory primer for it before that whole internet thing took off and killed the community.
Embarrassingly enough, the first person I ever really flirted with, or spent hours on the phone with, or hours typing with for that matter, was this girl who went by the handle Tika and whom I'd met on my BBS. She lived in Northglen, and her real name was Aimee, but we never met face to face. I don't remember her last name, and the files that contained it have long since disappeared into the cyber obsolescence that could one day render all of today's society a blank page in the annals of history.
But Aimee. Oh Aimee. Sometimes I really miss you.
My point is that while our relationship started in the virtual world, my feelings for her were real. When we started talking on the phone my feelings were still real, and had we met in person I'm sure she would have been my first kiss. (Ahh, Alexa. I also wonder about you sometimes, but not quite as fondly.)
Which is why I can't for the life of me figure out how this guy thinks he's not cheating. From a Wall Street Journal article titled, "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?:"
On a scorching July afternoon, as the temperature creeps toward 118 degrees in a quiet suburb east of Phoenix, Ric Hoogestraat sits at his computer with the blinds drawn, smoking a cigarette. While his wife, Sue, watches television in the living room, Mr. Hoogestraat chats online with what appears on the screen to be a tall, slim redhead....
One Saturday night in early June, [the non-virtual Mrs. Hoogestraat] discovered [Mr. Hoogestraat's] cyber wife. He called her over to the computer to show her an outfit he had designed. There, above the image of the redheaded model, it said "Mrs. Hoorenbeek." When she confronted him, he huffily replied that it was just a game.
JUST A GAME?! HE MARRIED A WOMAN ONLINE! THEY SHARE A VIRTUAL APARTMENT! More from the same article:
Academics have only recently begun to intensively study the social dynamics of virtual worlds, but some say they are astonished by how closely virtual relationships mirror real life. "People respond to interactive technology on social and emotional levels much more than we ever thought," says Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University. "People feel bad when something bad happens to their avatar, and they feel quite good when something good happens."
On a neurological level, players may not distinguish between virtual and real-life relationships, recent studies suggest.
On the one hand, it's good to know that my "relationship" with Tika follows, well, "normal" if you will behavior patterns. However, this is bad news for all of those cyber-cheaters out there.
Is Mr. Hoogestraat cheating on his wife? Yes, absolutely. Are friendships forged in cyberspace just as "real" as those forged in real-space? Also yes, absolutely.
It will be interesting to watch as this develops over the next several years and decades. Which way will things go? Will people realize that online relationships aren't as rewarding somehow? Or will people recognize that social bonds are social bonds, whether they're online or offline? In some ways online communities have more "community" than the neighborhoods in which we live - but more on that some other time.
For me, I know that at least one super-geeky middle schooler will always remember his very special BBS girlfriend. Wherever you are, I hope you're doing well, Tika.
I watched the movie "You've Got Mail" a few weeks ago (I know, I'm super lame, but almost all of that movie takes place in my new neighborhood, so I had to), and I spent the first half of that movie shocked that when I'd seen the movie 10 years ago, I hadn't realized that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were having a scandalous internet affair - before anyone realized that was taboo. Weird.
Posted by: Marcia | August 27, 2007 at 04:40 PM