Strangers on The Internet Want Your Mind
They’re so sweet, sometimes they get the entire brain!
Who’s old enough to remember when the internet came along?
Me, of course!
I should have opened a bookshop, but I got sucked into chatrooms instead — did you know even normal people come with strangeness built in?!
The typical stranger danger is like that man who grabbed me on the way to school saying I could choose a puppy from his car. I elbowed him in the goolies and ran. I had sharp skinny elbows and a brother who’d taught me what to do with them.
But you can’t elbow an internet stranger in a chatroom.
On the internet, strangers aren’t after your body, they’re not after your chat. They’re after your thoughts.
Chatrooms were pure crack
Chatrooms had the power to turn a midnight trip to the loo into a two-hour round trip back to bed because it was essential to stop by the desktop first and dial-up the screechy modem to see if any of the crew had left a message.
C-SXstallion was definitely not my crew. I’d been swatting away this pervert’s wanna chat? wanna c-sex? messages for a while and when his bare muscled torso flashed up after I logged in, I hit the delete button as usual.
Instead I opened one from Michael, a Brit who was part of my crew — I knew he was a Brit because I’d tested him on his local knowledge already.
I wasn’t expecting a confession! The limpet was owning up that C-SXstallion was his alter-ego! He’d been using it to:
- Cyber-shag hot American women (who were probably big fat hairy men but he said he didn’t care so long as they left the hot photo up)
- Wind me up — it amused him that me and him had good conversations but as soon as he approached me under the guise of C-SXstallion, all the armour went up.
Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.
Those early internet days were a big costume party
Nobody outright believed anyone was who they said they were. Do they now, even? ha! Deep meaningful conversations with people were a-plenty, but you always held a bit back just in case they were in role-play.
One person even had a brother come on to announce his sad demise. Then he forgot he was supposed to be dead and appeared in the chatroom a few weeks later as if nothing had happened.
The lonely people were the ones in greatest danger because they were a sponge for friendship. Sweet words at the right time could cause tragedies — lonely people are still the most vulnerable now.
So while me, Michael and others were a crew, none of us knew or sought the real-life details of each other.
The habit took hold. To this day, you will not find a photo of me online anywhere. And I love it! Family and friends are banned from posting anything and I’ve never done it myself. There is one blurry photo from a work function but it doesn’t say Piree, it just has my initials so that’s fine by me!
(I did get to know a couple of people and met them and their families when we went to the US on holiday. It was lovely! There are exceptions to every rule!)
When Michael told me he was also C-SXstallion, I wasn’t hurt, offended or creeped out. The surprise was that it was no surprise!
I’ve always loved discovering different sides of people, it’s fun — Hidden depths are real! Multiple sides to personality are real!
There are things people can say to some people and not to others. That’s one of the biggest advantages of the internet — it makes it easier to meet people to help explore your deeper self.
People are like… I can’t think of the word… they change and shimmer in different lights. Vampires, perhaps.
As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen
— Winnie the Pooh
When you connect, you connect. It’s up to you how many facets of a person you want to connect with. No-one’s obliged to connect with every facet. People have agendas and navigating them is part of human interaction.
Our friendship continued with the bonus I no longer had crappy messages to swat away whenever I logged in.
If you wake up without a label, do you exist?
People are like Willy Wonka’s gobstoppers — that’s the word! They change flavour when new things lap at their brains!
New information comes in and the brain makes people be and do different things!
One role isn’t enough for me or you or anyone! But life’s not long enough to be and do every label that’s inside you.
Life’s not long enough, but the internet is!
Strangers on the internet tickle the brain and take over your mind. They unlock all the labels floating inside and make you think you can be anything! They give you a sense of belonging, an immediate rush of endorphin to make it seem you just made it!
Yay!
Some people find a partner for a good night in
Others let social media screw their brains out
When people don’t know how to scratch the itch of their own changing flavour, they let strangers online do it for them.
Troubles begin when strangers discover people are easy to manipulate. Marketing people and advertisers already know this!
Strangers take over the mind in so many ways:
- Strangers turn people into infantry in battles made of bandwagons — commonsense flies out of the window when trendy soundbites and crazy-shite propaganda assail the senses
- Strangers lead people into endless scrolling wastelands disguised as theme parks — everyone thinks they’re enjoying the ride, some never realise how this plastic-living has suppressed their hidden depths
- Strangers nourish seedlings of friendship & belonging, disguising the superficiality under gloss, platitudes and praise — fame and glory is all that matters!
Important relationships fall aside while the immediate gratifying ones get all the attention.
All that you have is your soul
- Everyone wants to be more than the label they’re wearing.
- Everyone wants everyone else to stay who they are and be like the North Star, a stable base to home in on.
Social media is full of distractions that keep people stuck and seemingly happy with their lot, even as they’re desperately unhappy looking for something more. They hear the knocking of different labels inside them, but they don’t know what the sound means, let alone how to reach it.
It’s easier to be a North Star than the explorer on the sea. A North Star stays where the Universe put it. There’s a lot of stability in being a North Star — all nice and pretty to look at, but really, not much more than a luminous ball of gas.
Explorers go where they want under their own steam. They’re proper scarred by the journeys they took through their labels. They know they’ll die before their whole story can make its way to the surface but they want as much of it as they can — so they build defences and put up blocks, protecting themselves as much as they can from invaders who want to steal who they are.
C-SXstallion was amused my armour went up with him. I was amused he’d thought it wouldn’t.
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