Monday 8 August 2011

Cyber love

Another friend is in love without even having met the object of his desire: BR posted "BR is in love" on Facebook and from the comments I learned that he has just chatted on-line with his "love" and will meet face-to-face for the first time later this month. Well, miracles do happen and I sincerely hope that BR will not be disappointed, however the chances of BR knowing that this will be his "real love" are slim.
I have never fallen in love on-line (yet?). My closest experience was back in the late 1980's, when Internet and Internet dating didn't exist yet, and we were all using the telephone chatboxes. You'd call a number for gay chatting, would be connected to a "room" with some 10 other guys, people would introduce themselves ("Hi, good evening, my name is happyamsguy and I am 27 years old") and when two people liked each other from the first few sentences you could dial a number for an operator (a real human) to come to the room and you would ask if Mr X and Y could get a private room. And so it happened that I "met" a guy from Rotterdam. We liked each other and exchanged telephone numbers (the chatboxes were ridiculously expensive) and for the next few months we called each other almost every night. After a few days I proposed that we'd meet in person, but he didn't want that and suggested we would go on a "blind date holiday". First I didn't like the idea but he convinced me and we booked a bus tour to Prague some months later.
Our telephone conversations continued and it was all good and fun. I wasn't in love, but I was always looking forward to our frequent talks on the phone.
Time passed and the day arrived that we would meet. The bus would leave from a place close to my house and we agreed hat he'd arrive at my place an hour before we had to be at the bus station. As soon as I opened the door we both knew that this wasn't going to work. We were just not each other's type. Most of the time in Prague we went our separate ways, and only on the way back were we able to chat and talk about our adventure. Back in Amsterdam we said goodbye and never spoke to each other again.
Cyber love? I am sure it exists, but I am not a believer.