The Truth Is… Out There
So a question’s been asked. And in answer, the tale I’ve told, am telling, and will tell is where the answers lie to that…
But let me widen that debate to all of us who find or have found themselves in the online world for a moment because hey I’ve noticed that it’s been getting a bit bitter and twisted in ye olde virtual space lately meaning if this were an MGM musical I’d now like to break into a beautifully knockabout and improbably contrived big number called “Folks you just gotta have perspective!” complete with harmonising chorus girls and an overlong tap dance routine.
Okay. So quickly for those who don’t know; my own saga to date concerns a twenty-nine year old who created an online persona to liven up the humdrum a little but soon took it offline when a certain ballsy stateside party came a calling, and then decided after that to continue with all this fun he was having in the cyberverse back in the real world too. Now there’s lots more I could add to this, but hey I’ve told it already and if you really want to know the rest, just ask. Instead why I brought this up was because I wanted to talk about what’s waiting out there, i.e. the “real world”, if you can get your cyber balance sorted.
Not long after I went “public” with my own chatroom creation (and after almost chucking it all in due to a certain… well a certain someone), I pretty much walked away from all things online for quite some time having, aged thirty, laid down my route one to personal happiness (or so I thought then) via one long offline bender focussing on lust and career. Back then you see the whole web chat/dating malarkey was still in transitional mode, still a little bit stigmatising if you reckoned yourself to be a dateless wonder whose only means of expression was the anonymity of fast flying text and emoticons.
And then… well and then the world moved on; so that at some point while still on that same bender I then thought, hey why not return to the cyberverse WITHOUT this time stopping what I did offline too. You see I’d left it alone thinking you could only have one or the other; either a cyber or in-da-flesh ideal where never the twain could find parity. Well I was wrong. And I’ve thus re-entered the frolics of the worldwide web – as you’ve seen and heard – whilst still being able to keep things “real” too.
Now far be it from me to say I’m the only one who does this. I’m pretty certain there’s plenty of us now who can trip the light fantastic across both “platforms” whilst still retaining their surefootedness. I mean this was really what my own adventure was about after all, just finding a little more confidence.
However I still get the feeling some people seek the online world for more than that. That they believe everything said on a dating/chat site “must be true” because surely nobody ever lies on these things? Hence they find themselves, strangely, more let down in the cyberverse when replies don’t come, when people don’t show, when pictures aren’t real because they’ve raised expectation levels to believe, indeed hope, that somehow they’ve gone beyond “real life” to a place where all this isn’t supposed to happen. Well they haven’t. It’s just another part of the great big game as much as going to a club, getting chatted up with a line about airline pilots and never being called again the next day. What matters more is simply what you do, what you want, and what you don’t when you’re here, that’s all.
Who needs the rancour, name-calling, textual finger-pointing, generalising and cessation of our own “real life” responsibilities by finding just some other new medium to blame? Sure let’s debate where we can and express diverging opinions, plus challenge them if we must too. But at the same time let’s not do all that at the expense of some fun, some romance (whether long or shortlived), some laughs and yep, that word again… perspective.
I mean this might sound rich coming from one whose raison d’etre was an online persona to kickstart his own life again (although really he’s just the personification of a “change” I made once) but don’t forget that why we’re all here is maybe… just maybe to find the confidence to inject a little more of that fun, romance and laughter into our walking/talking selves too.
Besides, what would you prefer; just telling a few porkies or petty point scoring in the virtual world, or instead taking a punt by using it to fix a date in the real world with someone stylish, classy, charming, sexy and you know what else, just nice.
I mean I know what yours truly would rather being doing…
Read more about Bastian Dash’s adventures on your personal home page…
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