FACELESS vs.1

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If you were to ever pick an internet bully from a crowd of people, he wouldn’t have even registered in your mind.  Socially awkward, a receding hairline at 25, and a quietness that drew him to the sides of a room. Over time, his attacks on people became more vicious, more personal, and more persistent.   As a moderator of the board, I’d warn and ban him – eventually he’d apologise, say he’d be nicer to others, and the cycle would start again. There was no reason for his choice of victims.  It appeared that he would search out private information from other members of the website to use in his attacks. One day, one of my fellow moderators sent me a message.  He said that he was going to quit because this bully had told him that he would turn me, and the other moderators, against him. This time, I didn’t warn the bully.  Instead, I instructed my friend to let slip that he knew the bully’s name and where he worked.  From that point on, he was never attacked again.  The loss of anonymity scared him.  In fact, I knew that he used IP masking software to ensure that nobody could trace his posts to his work. Still, the bully found other people to attack.  But like the school playground, there is always someone who will be bigger, tougher, and dirtier than you.  Someone else started to slowly reveal details of the private life of the bully.  A name here, a physical description there, a link to a photo elsewhere. Eventually, he ceased to use the website.

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I have had a stalker on facebook, someone who I had met briefly through work. They just kept sending me private messages and I wouldn’t respond until they finally stopped.

There are always ways in which to deal with online stalkers, always ways to get across your message, the idea that you are powerless I think is not true.

I don’t use my own photo on facebook, this was not a conscious choice – I just like it that it is a changing façade, like a billboard that can be pulled down and altered depending upon what the news of the day is.

It is a reflection of my mood – or of what I am interested in that day.

It is never for other people – it is for me.

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i don’t feel lonely after spending time on the net. sometimes a little empty, sometimes a little down because i have cheated myself into thinking that the feelings that were there when i was chatting to my mate were going to materialise physically into my bedroom somehow and they don’t.

i speak from the heart, but it sometimes puts me in a heads-only-space and i’m in there enough.

i sometimes feel stupid and old fashioned and somehow incapable because i can’t work out all the new ways to do things… upload for example.  i don’t yet have the skills to do my own website, and that annoys me as well.  its time and money i don’t have.

sometimes the net assists in spirally me into all the things i don’t know… love or otherwise.

mostly it has kept me in touch with people. mostly it has brought a sometimes dark past into very clear, un-scary light.  it has made me appreciate that we all have moments in moments and they are all as crazy and rapid and random as the next.  and that’s the way it is.

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I ask myself how we bear witness to other people’s loneliness. Not just the “I wish I could meet somebody” kind of loneliness, I am talking about the stark, violent aloneness of the victim, the broken hearted, the persecuted and the missing.  We are not witnessing loneliness, we are witnessing aloneness, the kind of aloneness caused by another, the isolating of another, the destruction of another’s will to live. We are watching another’s soul be systematically worn down.  Hope has flown out the window and we are left standing by, the eternal bystander who cannot bear to look away from that which we cannot stand to look at.  And ironically, we are not alone, we, the witnesses. We are many. We at least, have each other to turn to and say, did you see that? Wasn’t that awful, simply awful. We have each other to turn to and say, thank god it didn’t happen to me. We can all agree on that fact, it isn’t happening to me. Kind of like browsing the lonely hearts web site, you are just looking.  Just seeing who is there.

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• There is this man, and a part of me wants to make contact because on paper, he seems like a man I should meet. Can you find “chemistry” online? Others do, but I feel I have yet to experience that. The tension you find with another, in the flesh … the power of attraction at work, the subtle gestures, the indications of mutual desire, the vulnerability, these experiences seem lost in the ether. My own email relationships are all with men I’ve met at least once, and all I’ve been intimate (sexually) with. Which brings us, I guess to the question of how many of these “relationships” I have, and what qualifies as infidelity when one is in a “flesh based” intimate relationship with one partner. There is never one man for me, as in one man only that I love. There is always about five men I love at a time, and those men I connect with online are the enduring lovers. We are not flirting, but we are great friends, and I suspect would become lovers if we met in the flesh again. I am not willing to give up those friendships, even though they are with past lovers, and the attraction/s are still strong. When my father died a few years ago, I found solace and comfort was on offer online, in a way that it simply wasn’t in my intimate relationship. To be honest there had always been problems with our communication from the start, but tough times broke us, instead of making us. He did not know of my other relationships, and these days, I would probably not put those online relationships at risk for anyone, no matter how much love we had between us. Living part of my social life online, has taught me a lot about how difficult I find the idea of pure monogamy.  If pure monogamy means letting go of contact with all former lovers, or men you are/have been attracted to. I love the art of letter writing, albeit in this new technological age. Every email is welcome, and the care taken to think about what is written shows. I think that gets lost in the daily life of an intimate relationship – I usually end up feeling more alone “with another” than when reading or re-reading my emails from those other distant men.  I think what I love most about these relationships lived online is the fact they are great narratives unfolding, they are like little books being written. They capture history, affection, and a deepening bond … and it is this that I find most fascinating about online connections. You can feel so much more love and affection for a person far away, than for the person you are supposed to be “in love” with, the person who shares your bed, your home and your daily life. Love on the wire.

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I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts. I have made love on the net with words and thoughts.

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i have a friend and we’ve always flirted and when he moved back to melbourne we started talking on skype for hours and playing games of chinese checkers w the camera and playing with where the other was looking and then we thought up other games to play and started playing strip rock paper sissors which was fun also kinda strange cos you can see your self in the corner of the screen and i would try and not look fat kinda strange also then we would  ’share a wank’ as we’d call it which is fine cos everyone watches porn and this is just live porn ’skyporn’ ya so we did that wich was fun and physically very awkward cos he’d want to see bits but then you have to tilt the screen and see the top of a computer wich isnt that much of a turn on for me… perhaps this is too much detail. then he moved back to adelaide and the physical space is closer and sype is less necessary and he gets a girlfriend and my relationship should be more important than that and we never talk on skype.

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A teenage girl is followed on her walk home by a group of boys from school. They corner her in a park, behind some trees, and they gang rape her after warming her up with a little teasing, the usual stuff like “what a fucking dog, I’ve never seen such an ugly bitch”. This is captured by a few of the boys on their mobile phones, and shared with the world later, on You Tube.

A girl-child of about five years of age is trapped in a cage. Her father has locked her in there, and is broadcasting images of her being tortured on YouTube, and sexually defiled for a private network of paedophiles. Those who investigate crimes against children look on in horror, desperately attempting to locate the girl, who they name “Jessica”, in order to rescue her. Jessica has been online, for all to see, for a few years.  Her father takes money from the paedophile punters.

Five prostitutes are murdered in quick succession in a town in England. One of the suspects has his own My Space page. He is later exonerated of the crime, but My Space has already closed down his account.

There is a website dedicated to missing people. Run by someone who wants to remember those who simply disappear for no apparent reason. If you log on to the page, you will see a photograph, and read the story of who they were, and the last known contact anybody had.

There is a website which is an alphabetical catalogue of victims of serial killers. You click on a letter, pick a name, and find a head shot of a smiling face, with the story of the victim was, and who they belong to, as in which serial killer they belong to.

I logged onto a dating website the other day, and cruised through fifty profiles of men all looking for a soul mate. Someone to share the good times and bad with. I looked at the faces of all the lonely people pretending that they aren’t lonely, just thought they’d see what happens. I looked into the eyes of all the lonely people who are trying to reach out to another, who might or might not exist.