Truths of Old

I was going to write this piece ages ago, but somehow life got in the way, as it does.

These days I find myself pressed for time to write... it's a trade off between social life, work and spare time I guess, and spare time is losing...

Anyway, the internet as a dating service. Good, or bad.

I think it's a horrendous thing.

I suppose it depends on context - there are dedicated dating websites that run along the lines of friendster, only with a less... platonic intent (meet your perfect match!) which are purpose built. And perhaps that's a good thing, perhaps not. I wouldn't honestly know - I've never felt the need to meet random strangers through electronic media with the sole intent of hooking up with them. It all seems rather sad, and meaningless.

Years later - dad, how did you meet mum? Oh I saw her on a dating website and thought she looked like someone I wanted to fuck...

Frown.

Of course if it's just an easy / pretty fuck that you're out for, then I suppose those webbys are perfect, innit.

Let's not kid ourselves... oh I'll just meet this girl, interesting "profile" (ha, girls, you think guys actually read the words with any other intention than to shag you?) maybe we can be friends, and then, and then maybe more.. and...

shrug.

I'm not casting judgement here... honestly if both parties are out for a shag then date-sites are perfect...

Dunno, speed dating might be more fun though, you get to actually meet the person in the flesh from the word go.

And that's why I think the internet is a horrendous medium for "meeting" someone.

I'd rather the first "touch" of minds, of skin - be done live. To see that person face to face, up close, and watch their eyes watching you.

There's a certain magic in being face to face with someone, a certain extra X factor that all the blogging and ICQing and MIRCing and MSNing in the world can never, ever capture.

And if it's a partner you're looking for, or rather I'm looking for - there must be "magic".

Of late, someone I don't know at all has confessed to a... less than platonic interest in my online persona, based primarily on my blog. There's a certain extra quality here, she claims, that piques her interest.

I tried to explain some of what I've written here to her, but she took it poorly... and thought I was trying to dash her hopes and hurt her.

I'm not... I just find it... wrong. These words here are not who I am. These thoughts that I have laid bare - are but a part of who I am... and an insignificant part at that.

You will never know me, as a stranger - even if you were to trawl through every last entry here, back to the Very beginning. Even were you to find my other "secret" blogs - we will always be strangers, until the time our worlds intersect and our paths cross - in real life.

There shouldn't be a fascination with my thoughts and mere words that amounts to anything more than a trivial fascination... I would never meet someone based on what they've written, with the hope of hooking up with them. In the same way that celebrity photographs are merely that - celebrity photographs, and nobody ever falls in love with a photograph.. blogs - even celebrity blogs... are "still" snapshots of a person, and superficial snapshots at that.

There are too many masks, and lies out here on the internet to trust mere words, and even photographs. Dawn Yeo, Daphne Teo, even dear Xiaxue herself...

... they are (probably) not who they seem.

And perhaps, neither am I.

Until I meet them, or you meet me in real life... we are all of us - merely online personas.

And I maintain that cowboy caleb is really daphne teo. haha.