Thoughts on Cyber-Living: Friends

From photo a day

Cyber-life has been intruding in Ann-life. Not that I can blame anyone but myself...

well, maybe Kevin.

He is the person who actually started communicating with me via e-mail almost 10 years ago. Before that e-mail was a big virtual e(mpty) mail box. Then, it bloomed. Notes. An occasional photograph. Poems. E-mail kept us connected while he lived in Sydney and I lived in Fayetteville.

Later, I joined an "Internet Community" of similarly aged and similarly staged women. We shared common aspirations, trials, and experiences. When I became unemployed in Cleveland, particularly when Kevin moved again to Australia, I checked my message board two, three, four times a day. When I moved Brisbane, before I started working, while Kevin was away, I practically lived at the computer hitting the refresh button and hoping someone had lodged a new post.

More recently, I have been sucked into social networking sites. This has enabled me to reconnect with friends from LONGGGGGGGGGG ago. Friends I'd pretty much given up ever communicating with again. Friends to whom I now owe a letter.

But, I am also getting friend requests from people I don't believe I know. I just let them sit there - unwilling to either say yes or no. In two cases we were at Duke at the same time and maybe they were students of mine? But, who'd remember a TA almost 20 years later? I think it is more likely they just think I was in their graduating class - except I was in the Graduate School and they were probably undergraduates.

Those aren't half as odd to me as the recent influx (now 3) of strange women who tell me they are following me on "Twitter." (Let me give you some advise. Don't follow me on Twitter. We'll both end up lost.) The first time it happened I said OK and then went to check her out. And, she ended up being some sort of Internet porn site. Obviously, she did not do her homework in choosing me. I ducked into a virtual alleyway and lost her. The next two, even though they may be legitimately nice real women - though they have the same suspect "profile" of one tweet, zero or one followers and following a couple hundred people - I blocked immediately.

Finally, I started my blog to keep my friends and family back home informed about what I was doing and what it all looked like. They, however, are not the people reading my blog. I don't really know much about the people who read my blog. The largest number are reading from Australia. I don't know that many people in Australia, at least relative to the US. And, I know no one in Malaysia.

Anyway, I'd like to welcome whoever you are. Thank you for stopping by. You are always welcome. If you leave a comment, I'll respond.