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OMG Girlz Don't Exist On Teh Intarweb!
The Escapist has a brilliant article penned by a young woman who has to deal with blatant disbelief at her existence. Why? Because there are no women on the internet. From the article: "This is the story of my internet life. (I'm not quite sure if it's a good or bad thing that I have an internet life, but internet life it is.) I'm a girl, I play games and I exist on the internet. Or so you think. Time after time, I get told I'm not a girl and that I don't exist. It's happened so much that I'm beginning to think that it's true. So, I spend some time getting to know them. Who are these mysterious creatures called girls if they don't exist on the internet? What does this mean for the men of the internet?"
You spelled "you're speakin' the truth, brutha category" wrong.
Its all well and good being irritated by the reaction men have to women on the Internet, however, it is often justified.
In a small IRC channel I used to frequent a lass joined. She spoke a fair amount, and made some friends there and yes she got the 'You got pics' thing.
I dunno why people try to make out its to check the sex of the person you are talking to. Not like youve got a hope in hell of pulling someone whos usually hundreds if not thousands of miles away. I just want to check out a nice pair of... eyes.
Anyway, seedy imaturity aside, she did have pics and sent them about the place, they looked reasonable enough and nothing more was said on the matter.
For what was probably well over a year she was involved with the channel and made good friends with more than one guy there even arranging to go out with one and actually move up to his place. Only thing was, some other guy came in to the channel and started asking questions. Turns out he had a thing going on with her as well and was fairly devestated that she had gone and dumped him. She promptly vanished at this point as did both boyfriends. For a while we were all speculating on what was going on. Until the first boyfriend came in and he had apparently been doing some research. (A little worrying really, just how obsessed was this guy with some lass hed never even spoken to.) He had found that the person at the address she lived at was a guy.
Surely not! There was no way most of the channel was gonna believe this was genuine after all there were quite a few people in the channel who had been friends with her for ages. Still had a heck of a good laugh with the idea. Needless to say it was about to get funnier.
One of the other guys in the channel thought maybe he could get to the bottom of this by checking her livejournal. He was confused to find a livejournal not by her but by a bloke called Brian. A 16 year old Bisexual no less. A quick check with old and new livejournal showed that the old one had been carefully changed in to the new one with all refrences to his female persona removed or changed.
Oh and just to make damn sure non of this was wrong or fabricated we managed to get in touch with his best friend who admited she'd (Or maybe he'd who knows.) heard him mention something about the IRC channel before. Well and truly busted.
I laughed good and hard about all that (Shed persuaded the whole chanel she was a romanian hotty for more than a year!) but there was a more serious side. Ignoring boyfriend number ones stalker tendancies and the embarasment to boyfriend number 2 who I dont think has ever returned to IRC. There were quite a few people added to that group of internet users who wouldnt be ready to believe the next person to come along and claim the're a girl.
If your reading this Brian it was a laugh ill give you that, but over a year? I think you may need to see a head doctor.
Oh and an amusing concidence in all this. His IRC nickname was Whitney.