After a smallish absence (on a cosmic scale) I’m back and writing again. As you may know (if you may know me) over the last several months I’ve started to try to try my life over again. To that end I’m trying to meet new people (hopefully interesting people who have something to say, something to teach me, something to offer, something grand, someth…. oh who am I kidding someone reasonably not horrible who might talk to me) being physically cute or at least not grotesquely disfigured is always a bonus. So to end the end of that end (and I’m not talking bottoms) I’ve joined several online communities (you may be reading this on one of them if you are also online in a community and reading this). So far here are a few of the things I’ve learned (read them and learn them for yourself as if they were something you could learn or that was possible to read)

1) Are people online normal? In other words are they a reasonable cross section of everyday people one might be apt to meet on the streets if one was on the streets. And the answer I’ve found is a resounding yes… On the surface it would seem that people online are weird, dysfunctional, heavily laden with emotional baggage, and generally rude, unpleasant, and ridiculous in extreme ways. So in this regard they are just like anyone else you’ll meet in any other way on this planet. Bottom line, if you think someone is normal, then you just don’t know them well enough yet. Sometimes people online DO tend to let the freak flag fly faster than in real life in that text on a screen, or 10 year old out of date pre-sex-change operation photography gives them the layers and masks that they would otherwise put on in real life in many other ways. Bottom line people, if you are a person, you probably have some issues.

2) Who is worse online women or men? The answer to this question is that they are equal. Men (other than yours truly, not that I’m not all man baby…) seem to do the following things online: Write to women in bulk e-mail hoping that 1 out of 100 will respond, send messages to women based solely on their pictures and the amount of skin shown therein, post comments with great intellectual value such as “nice boobies” which in all likelihood took them about 3 hours to write. This of course gives all men a bad name, but I’ve found that women also do bad things online. Women tend to do the following things: Post their incorrect ages, sizes, weights, relationship status, eye color, shoe sizes, and the list goes on. Another pet peeve (and I’m a good pet owner) is women who don’t bother to respond to well intentioned heartfelt thoughtful hello messages that were sent after actually reading their profiles and finding something in common to talk about. In half of all cases this might be caused by the effect of boobie men (see above) but in the other half it is likely just that those particular women are just as much of a jerk as the shallow guys they themselves might complain about if they hadn’t just finished posting that nudie picture of themselves anyway. Of course I know that isn’t always true. I’m allowing statistically for those women who find me repulsive, repugnant, or any other word with re in its beginning. It is their right to feel that way, and in all likelihood they don’t have anything much to offer (see initial paragraph). But still, meeting people online is difficult. As always 99% of apples being rotten tend to spoil the barrel for the 1% of us that aren’t rotten. (you are reading something what I have rotten right now).

3) What is the deal with Chatrooms? Initially my foray into chatrooms seemed to indicate that most chatrooms were simply 100 or more men (of dubious age and or IQ) who sat around and said things like “are there any hot women in here” while at the same time a series of clever web-robots searched for IM screen names so they could send them offers of 5 free minutes on their sexy webcams. So not a lot of talk going on, and not a lot of sex either unless you count idiots who pay a robot so they can end up infected and spammed. I almost gave up on online chats because I’m not inclined to be such an idiot (again ladies, don’t get me wrong, I’m all man) until I found actual conversations on Myspace. I’m sure that other communities with real chat also exist. My tip for me, don’t say “hey any hot ladies in here” but instead say “hey any insane ladies in here?” you’ll get more responses (and possibly more truthful ones).

4) Ok so whats the deal with Myspace Chat then? Myspace chat has actually surprised me greatly. 99% of the people I’ve met have been (really nice, mature, sane, reasonable, credits to the human race) seeming, far more seeming than anyplace else. Seriously though it has been a very positive experience and 99% of the people on my friends list on there are people I’ve spent at least a few hours talking with. Now that being said, on to the negatives. Occasionally one person comes into a room and says something innocent enough sounding like “I want to kill you and then rape your lifeless skull” to 16 year old girls for no apparent reason. Now I don’t want to be labeled reactionary, but to me that seems a bit antisocial, if not downright frightening. So I’ve tended to try to be an internet superhero (designated by my hot-pink text color on chat) and try to shoe away the loons and sociopaths that sometimes come in. Sometimes these people try to explain their actions by saying “I’m EMO” which although I initially thought they were totally out of their minds and making typo’s for “elmo” that beloved muppet and sex zombie… no its actually some kind of crap music the kids are listening to these days. Some people think it gives them the right to be total ass’s for no apparent reason. Instant karma gets these people in the end though. At least lets hope. Ok on to part two of this mini-sub-rant. Why are the 16 year olds in the rooms with the sociopaths anyway? I’m all for online communities but sometimes we need differentiation. Of course if I or anyone else was smart enough to just make their own room, that would be moot. I guess a lesson should be learned by all. Ah my best friend, the kick button. (Karma)

5) What should I say while in chat? This is something I’ve devoted far too many hours studying. In looking at the best and worst of what the internet seems to offer, as well as reactions to my own banter I’ve found the following things to be useful: Firstly be a shameless self promoter. People love it when you tell them how great you are… really, this always works. Ok that out of the way, here is a list of words and phrases you should use frequently: “Pimp”, “Quixotic”, “Bling Bling”, “Did you read my great blog yet”, “here is the URL to my website, but this isn’t spam or anything”, “I’m not wearing any pants”, “I’m a very cunning linguist”, “are you wearing pants?”, “ why don’t you stop telling me if you have pants on or not”, “Really I’m not a creep”, “I have lots of money”, “I like pie”, and finally “I just took off my pants” (I know this is very pants heavy, but previous research into human nature shows that pants are really the key, not as much as shoes, but who talks about shoes in a chat room?) Never under any circumstances talk about shoes in a chat room.

6) What should I hope to come away with? Friendship… agonizing monogamous friendship. There are two kinds of people online. Those who are nearby, and those who are far away. Essentially the same laws that govern gravitation, electric fields, and magnetic fields apply. Its hard to imagine that anyone reading this entry this far would not know what those laws were off the top of their heads, but for the hearty non-physics types… Essentially its all a question of inverse square relationships of two quantities. There exists a relationship whereby your attractiveness is related as the inverse square of your distance away from someone and consequently your chances of meeting them in real life IF you are sane and don’t jet across the country to meet strangers. In other words, local folks will hate you, distant folks will ask you to marry them. Its that simple. Who knew Newton and Einstein, who in their own ways yearned to unify all the basic forces of the universe (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces) would have come up short because people didn’t look for dates online back then. (the internet wasn’t about dates, or sex, or pornography in those days, mostly because it hadn’t been invented yet… woodcuts from Newton’s time didn’t have the subtleties necessary to inspire Newton as today’s online scene has inspired yours truly and now you by proxy) That being said, dates are possible at short distance. This is of course because the universe is powered by our tears and therefore always creates situations where we can refuel it. Thus without a few dates you couldn’t get your hopes up only to become a friend so that you can support that person through the string of jerks and idiots they date after they instantaneously decide you have no chemistry with them. If you are a woman then this happens after the guy has slept with you first, if you are a man, you never sleep with the woman. This is a universal law with no exceptions. It seems to be illogical in that how can men sleep with women and women not sleep with men, but this is just yin and yang at work here. (see men who are jerks and women who can sometimes too be jerks above) The universe is a zero sum game.

7) There is no number seven. This is a lucky number, and as I don’t really believe in luck any more it seems fitting not to have a number seven.

8) So what the hell is the point then? Probably something to do with pants or shoes, but rule six above fundamentally rules out the possibility that any of us will figure this one out in our lifetimes. Just as the internet is much better at delivering pornography than early woodcuts in Newton’s time, we need a much more powerful method that is not even dreamed of by living men before we’ll be inspired enough to find the answer. That being said, don’t lament, give up, or hate the people involved. Just hate the game. Refuse to play by its rules. Say Quixotic a lot (since your chances of coming out alive were zero to start with, there is nothing too loose!) So build up your sense of self worth to quixotic levels, pimp yourself and your bloggy goodness, and for goodness sakes, realize that if you don’t sleep with me, the terrorists win!