Day 2

The results of yesterday's venture into Friendsterville? One returned message. Said friend talked about how Freindster had died and was pretty much a done deal for him--he was getting ready to cancel his account. No, no, no--be part of Friendster's salvation, I told him. Will he comply? Somehow, I'm doubting it.

So I tried e-mail another friend I hadn't heard from in a while. She dropped off of MySpace, where we had also been connected. So this is the only way I have to get in touch with her. According to her profile she lives right here in town, which she hasn't done in quite some time. Anyway, will my query lead to renewed Friendster usage and a renewed friendship? Or will it lead her to cancel her account? These are the big questions.

I'm also trying to invite someone else who talks about how lame MySpace is and how much better Facebook works. Well, what of Friendster? She poo-poos it, but I bet she's never used it.

And finally, I will try to befriend a total stranger. This last part makes me a little queasy. Why? That's a good question. I didn't used to be so shy online, but with age has come a hesitancy to venture out among unknown Internet personalities. I think part of it is the way in which the Internet has taken on a kind of bad name, the way some bars are known for being pick-up joints. People go to them nonetheless, but there's a certain disgust with them. And so too now online contacting of total strangers.

Or maybe it was always that way, but I didn't really care. I did it anyway. And I had success. Some.

When I first came online some ten years ago, living in Fort Worth, online friends were really the first friends I made who were not coworkers in this location where I'd known no one before moving there to take a job. The Internet became a way to finally manage to garner a social life. No longer was I dreading the weekend, looking forward to the week, just so I could have some human contact. Now, I looked forward to social occasions on the weekend. But with time, this too changed. After a couple of years, making new friends online seemed to become harder and harder. The last person I met virtually first, before meeting them in real life, was a friend I made about three or four years ago. Since then, nada. True, I don't spend as much time online anymore. And I have a much wider circle of friends here in Athens, so that the virtual world no longer serves the same kind of purpose. But it's also true that what few people I haven't known that I've written to at random on various social networking sites have not written back by and large. (The exception have been a few who read one of my blogs, who I've ended up becoming irregular penpals with. And maybe this makes more sense. We share common interests, even if not common locations, so the friendships seem more natural.)

Certainly, one thing I had hoped, ten years ago, when I came online was to finally manage to have some success at dating. I did manage to meet a few women, but as in real life, nothing ever worked out. Ten years later, the Internet no longer seems any kind of salvation in that regard. I'm as unlikely to have success there as anywhere, I now know. And in a lot of ways, meeting someone in real life first in preferable--online correspondence is quite different from real-life interaction. Sometimes, one doesn't transfer over to the other, and vice versa. Only a very few friends of mine seem to be as good virtually as they are on the phone as they are in real life. Many only work in one medium.

The one advantage online ever offered me was that I feel much more comfortable in print than in real life when getting to know most people. A case in point would be the other night at a concert. Some woman I've thought attractive ever since I moved here but who I've only met on one occassion (I doubt she even remembers) plunked her purse down on a table next to me and then ran off to dance to the music. I wondered why she would be so bold as to just leave her purse like that, in a place where she couldn't even see it. About an hour later, she returned and accused me of messing with it. Was this her way of flirting? Was she serious? I think it was the former, but even if it was, I had nothing to say in response. All I could venture was a lame, "No, I wasn't," to which she said she was just trying to make things exciting. She then went to get a drink and moved the purse, once she returned, to a place where she could see it. In print, I like to think I could have managed to say something better, to know what to say. Not that that would have mattered much. As attractive as she is, my difficulties with women go far beyond having nothing to say in real life, as my lack of success online shows.

Okay, I just chickened out. I sent a message to someone who's a friend of a friend rather than a total stranger--someone I actually know in real life.