March 26, 2002

• Seduction.
  

  The Internet is an odd place. Here we can be anyone we wish to be - and compensate for any perceived failings by eliminating them. Self-invention. Highlight those qualities we like, play up biases we sense in our audiences, and brush under the rug those things that don't make us look so good.
  

  The wooing process.
  

  There are millions of sad lonely people out there, people who can't seem to get the kind of attention they crave in their real life, but find it easy to do online. If you are good with words, and good with sensing nuances, there are loads of lame ducks out there, desperate to connect, or to imagine they connect with you. One duck, two ducks, three ducks, more ducks - not recognising each other.  All writing madly back and forth. A flattering photo, some well placed comments, an email or ten - can be all it takes to find someone vulnerable and trusting and mess them about. For the unscrupulous or the fucked up - this is a temptation too hard to resist. All that ego food, just waiting to be plucked. And it's all the more powerful when it's wrapped up in something like an online diary, since it has the ring of truth. But not necessarily.
  

  You are being sold to every time you read an entry. Remember that.
  

  You can get completely emotionally involved with someone whom you've never met, based on how he or she respond to your words, or how you respond to theirs. If you are at all introspective, then if they strike a chord.  It is the instant of recognition that says, even though it's 3am on a Friday night and the rest of the beautiful popular people are out being beautiful and popular, I am not alone. Someone else is out there, who has been where I am.
  

  Maybe, Or maybe not. Maybe they are bored and fucking with your head because their life is making them yawn in the extreme, or they don't like themselves very much. You are sport. You are chum in the Internet sea.
  

  As a someone who writes online, it's difficult not to come to like the comments, or the praise. And to find yourself writing for them. And by extension, recreating yourself onscreen so that you woo and seduce and tempt the lonely, the insomniacs and the bewildered.
  

  Like shooting fish in a barrel. Not even sport really. And I figure I have some integrity. I figure I am aware.
  

  The more I get behind the skin of online journals, the more I realise that there's a whole world interacting that I know little about. Seduction, wooing, flirting, manipulation, all through journal entries. What is the point? Isn't lying in your journal kind of like faking an orgasm? Isn't the only person who misses out, YOU? And what happens when reality doesn't match the expectations you've created? Better run and hide methinks. Set up shop somewhere else perhaps.
  

  So.
  

  Here we are - on screen. On screen doesn't equal truth. And for those of you who are finding out just how weird the game here is played, my commiserations. It's never pretty when fantasy and truth collide. Life's hard enough without being sucked in by an onscreen superstar. You'll figure out who's real and who isn't. Go gently. Move slowly. Stay whole.

  • 1:02 am
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