BUTCH's Lessons to Be Heeded in Online Discourse

 

 

1. You might think that you're being sincere in what you say to people online, but sincerity, like any cogitative process or stance, requires data. Merely reading words on a screen or page presents data but only in cross-section; it might be a huge cross-section filled with intrigue, creativity, sensitivity, and romance, but equally huge core samples could completely subsume or submerge the one with which you are so enchanted. Know that what you are doing when chatting or corresponding with someone via email is more akin to coauthoring a serial novel than to living a life. Even if you can read your chat logs and emails and be convinced that they would make a best-seller, don't confuse them with genuine human interaction unless you already have met the person and are following up on an established intimacy. Or would you like to live on a shelf or as a listing in Amazon.com?

2. Never say "I love you" to someone for the first time online or over the phone. Never, ever, ever. This is a corollary to item 1. You should say "I love you" to someone only in their physical presence while looking in each other's eyes, preferably under a full moon on a warm night in spring when the scent of lilacs fills the air around you with sweetness and your heart aches to express that sparkling, jumping feeling inside it. There is a reason why the eyes are called the windows to the soul. People say things via technological mediation that they would never say in person owing to the anonymity and personal remove inherent in the media. As Dorothy Parker might have advised us, when you're sitting in front of your computer swearing true, faithful love to each other, eternal and undying, then chances are that at least one of you is lying, even if you both feel like the very soul of honesty.

3. It's much easier to deny, ignore, or impose revisionist historical perspectives on things written online or said on the phone than on things uttered face-to-face. Again, the eyes have it. Don't develop intense emotional investments based on such material, and don't waste time wondering just what was meant by this or that. If you want a puzzle, take one out of a box. A relationship must be grounded in what is done, not what is said.

4. The bottom line: The Internet is a great place to meet people. But as BUTCH gets older, her youthful Rousseauvian view of humanity has been replaced by a rather dour Calvinism: We are all basically corrupt or at least corruptible-including me and you, dear reader-and we often hear and see just what we want to hear and see. This makes solving for the variable people a dicey operation. Meet them online, talk to them on the phone, and leave your acquaintance as that-acquaintance-unless you don't want to take them seriously as whole people and all you're interested in is sex or some variation on fun and games. If you think someone is worthy of more than mere genital attention, don't proceed further until you've met him or her. You'll know which way the relationship should develop once you've spent time in each other's presence. And then I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world.

 

 

© 2001 Gregor Everitt