Slashdot Mirror
Online Romance - For Good or Evil?
Kitsune Sushi submitted this hot potato: "There have been a few discussions the past few weeks on Slashdot regarding female geeks (probably set into motion at least in part by that Linux Chix article), most of which have been cluttered by a number of "interesting" comments by various males. :) One post that struck me in particular suggested that many male geeks have a hard time finding a romantic interest because their female counterparts are often found in the same place they are: behind their computer monitors. This sort of begs the question: where do most geeks (male or female) most often find their potential partner(s)? Online? Off? Chat rooms? Matchmaker services? University? LUGs? Hmm.. Slashdot..?" What are your experiences with online romances?
"As this notion has so thoroughly sparked my curiosity concerning the subject, any comments on where anyone has looked or what they have tried (and whether or not they have been successful as of yet) would be most welcome. It would certainly be interesting to note whether or not most Slashdotters spend most of their time on a computer, and exactly what seems to "work" for certain people with regards to romance. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this conversation would be the following question: Has anyone ever met someone online and then moved to wherever they lived so the two of you could be involved in an actual relationship, and did it end up working out for the better?"
I Know that for me, they have worked. And I have meet many great friends, and finally someone who is more than a friend :D
:D
I Love my Mandy
In case of Emergency, Curl up in the Fetal position, and lick a Bible for comfort!
I ended up marrying my online romance - we met when the internet was still text - HTML what's that? on bbs.isca.uiowa.edu actually. I'm not on there anymore but it was interesting - long distance and computer. Phone bills were still high though :(
Yea, flamebait!
This is really pitiful. Go out on a "date"; try interacting with someone in the "real world". You'll find it easier than you may expect. Really. You should try it sometime.
I married a geek last January. She is a database wizard and a perl goddess, and we met on the jobsite.
It was truly a whirlwind romance, with her showing me how to implement of arrays of hashes and the like.
Good luck to all of the single geeks out there--there is someone waiting for you!
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Hello friends. Don't date girls or have sex with them or any nasty stuff like that. TURN THEM TO STONE instead, it's much more fun, especially if you're a petriphile (i.e. person with a petrification fetish)
PETRIFIED WOMEN KICK ASS
Well I met this one guy in a chat room, and i was always bitching about not having a gf, and then one day my isp (jps.net) suspended my shell account, and i needed one, so he gave me one on his school's student run linux box.
on login it displayed the names of a few new admins, one of which was female, so i asked him about her, and she happened to live not 5 miles from my house, and spring break was coming.
so he (and his gf) hooked us up, and beyond that i won't go into details, other than saying she and i are still together, and i hope we will stay that way.
Need a Catering Connection
Angie and I started talking on the Trek forum on
Delphi. I subscribed to them because they were the
only people around at the time who offered no charge internet e mail. I think C$ charged 20 cents a piece or so.
Anyway, we met FTF, dated for a year, broke up for a while, dated for a while, broke up for a year, got back together, and got married on September 25, 1999. Six weeks.
Neither of us would do it again, but... We did get to talk A LOT before spent a great deal of time in each other's physical presence. That helped. It also helped both of us to be online, as we are both a bit shy in public.
I could go on for hours, but basically, it worked, was no harder (or easier) than meeting someone in real life, and it isn't something we'd recommend.
-George
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why was this posted at 8:14 on a Saturday night? Did you know you could get a good response from all of us non date enabled supergeeks :)
_________
Sometimes, when I'm feelin' bored, I like to take a necrotic equine and assault it physically.
_________
Sometimes, when I'm feelin' bored, I like to take a necrotic equine and assault it physically.
Atleast one couple was married online on the Userfriendly list (majordomo@lists.paralynx.com / subscribe userfriendly in the body). It works. There's plenty of HNGs (horney net geeks) out there to make it possible. I wouldn't however, recommend taking anything very seriously until you meet them IRL (duh).
--
But I did meet one boyfriend at a summer academic camp for gifted high schoolers. Despite meeting in person, it turned into a long-distance relationship immediately - 3&1/2 hours by car is much, much more difficult to overcome if you have to ask your parents to drive you.
In general, I'd say that online relationships are most definitely worth it if you don't restrict yourself to them. If you're leading a fairly normal (by non-nerd standards) life and happen to fall in love online, I doubt there'd be a problem with it. But if your life consists of staying in the basement and hitting on anyone of your preferred gender in the AOL chat rooms, I doubt anything's going to work out. (And if you're the type of person who sits in the house and hits on people in AOL chat, I hope you don't reproduce.)
Marissa
Will you Merry Me??? PLEASE!?!?!?!?!
I met my wife through a personals ad. Her ad was specific in what she wanted and I fit (except for height -- she is 5'11" and I am 5'5").
She's not a geek, but she uses Linux and dosn't complain to me when her friends give her Windows-centric advise.
I think I'll keep her.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Nothing beats real life. I met my wife at work.
^TDL^
I met my wife on a MUD. I never took it too seriously until we met in RL though.
That is the real world on the other end of that wire.
Who do you think you're interacting with now, an AI?
FWIW, I met my partner online on a local BBS chat room. So far, the relationship's lasted 50 times longer than any previous relationship of mine.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Well, maybe we could hook up. Where are you from?
i had two (and a half) such experience, didn't work.
it's sorta like remote relationship only worse communication.
she does go to school accross the country from me, so a large portion of the year it is a long distance relationship via the net
Need a Catering Connection
I met my girlfriend about 2 years ago on IRC. It wasn't one of those "online romances", although we do email each other quite often, I met her online, and we started "romancing" irl. :)
I have met many great people online and know many other people who have met their gf/bf online. I have also recieved a number of employment opportunities from IRC.
The problem is, some people deliberately set out to go online and "pick up". If you just look for some nice people and a good chat, you're in fact much more likely to "pick up". Just choose a smallish server and join channels that interest you (such as #linux
An unfortunate side affect is that the wider community has no real idea about IRC, online chat, online community and all the rest of it, so saying "we met through the internet" is often met by a shocked/rude/strange reaction, but that's just life I guess.
Matt.
--------
I always thought people who specificly search for a romantic interest either online or in real life are limiting themselfs. Make a lot of friends, get to know them well, and enjoy life. Let the rest happen on it's own.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Becoming emotionally involved with someone on the other side of the Net, wholly dependent on email, IRC and such for any sort of interaction, will lead only to pain. Sooner or later it will fall apart, and someone will get hurt.
Take it from one who knows.
Online relationships can work. Some people find a lot of happiness through them.
BUT THAT DOESN'T GIVE EVERY LONELY GEEK ON THE NET FREEDOM TO GO HARASS EVERYONE HE THINKS IS FEMALE IN AN ATTEMPT TO GET WHAT HE WANTS!
Having a lot of mud experience, I can say with certainty that there are a LOT of idiotic children out there who treat members of the opposite sex with incredible rudeness. How many women out there use male names in public forums to avoid unwanted attention?
Don't go sending obscene messages, ICQs, mudtells, or whatever to ANYONE. If you're interested in someone, propositioning them for cybersex just isn't going to get you anywhere except a long term relationship with spanky and his five friends.
Treat ladies with respect. Don't say or do anything you wouldn't do in real life in person in front of them. Behave. Treat them with respect, kindness, and understanding. Most of all, just be yourself. No one ever had a succesful longterm relationship pretending to be someone they're not.
Chip
I find it funny that people have this odd sense that anyone you meet online is a pervert or otherwise disturbed. This is most funny coming from people who themselfs are online. I meet almost all my new friends online and find it much better for getting to know people before judging them superfically but I still hear gasps from some people I know because of the fact.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Allthough I am only 16, and admitedly have no experience in either real or online romances, I have to question the chances of any online love affair.
The first major problem lies in distance. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to find someone within your city or state, but chances are, you'll end up with someone who lives a considerable distance away. This usually is less of a problem when the two are adults (not teens or college students), but still the large costs in both money, time, and effort required to see the person may be overly taxing. Also, it brings up the issue of trust. You make take a distant relationship seriously, but should a nearby, real-life alternative come up, I doubt you'd have as much concern in remaining faithful to an online partner. They say "absence makes the heart grow fonder," but I think such a cliche proves itself wrong in this case.
The second issue is that the person may be highly different in "real" life. I know I tend be a lot more confident, in-your-face, and open in online situations... as opposed to my shy, timid real life nature. I can imagine the same is true for a lot of computer geeks. And this could present a problem should you meet your "partner" and find them to be a lot different in a face-to-face situation. The whole attraction might not be as strong in person. It reminds me of personal ads, where people may say a lot of things through a closed scene, but vary greatly in real life.
Which brings to mind another potential problem: phsyical appearence. I know it seems shallow, but looks have a lot to do with attraction. Most people have pics or quickcam's, but still I bet a fair share of online lovers who do meet are somewhat disappointed with each other's looks.
Maybe I'm pessmistic, and maybe it's my romantic inexperience talking, but I don't feel like online romances can really suceed. Granted, I've heard a few exceptions, including here on Slashdot, but I remain skeptical. Btw, if you did have an online romance turn into a sucessful real life one, would you mind telling me how you dealt with the issues I listed... I'm always interested in learning
...for on-line discussion. Yes, we can get some good, solid answers on Slashdot, but a there are too many factors that play into an equation like this to generate a solid, definite answer in this type of forum.
First, let me talk about myself personally. There are simply too many little things that I'm looking for in a girl. Most of these can't be determined in an on-line enviroment.
(My first-date test? I unlock the passenger door for her. If she leans over and unlocks my door, that's a Good Thing. Otherwise, well... it's generally been downhill from there.) I'm looking for little idiosyncracies in personality, little twists in taste, and other little details. Yes, they're little things, but I've been around the block enough to know what is important to me. These little things are what is important. And I've never been able to "see" these things in an on-line enviroment.
However, other people may not have their ideas so well-defined. Being able to come home at night and actually talk to your SO about the problems and issues you encountered at work that day may be a very large issue. Having your SO be a "geek" might be a very important factor for some. I can certainly understand this - I've got a couple (good-looking) friends who are computer fiends. It's certainly a refreshing things when they rebute you in a "discussion" about some issue. I really do enjoy being with these girls, because I can be myself and talk about computer topics without fear of being dubbed a "computer dork". But - they're not for me.
There is no simple yes or no answer to this kind of question. The answer to on-line romance depends upon what you're looking for, and who you are. The unfortunate part is that a lot of us don't know ourselves well enough to be able to clearly see what we want out of a relationship. I consider myself lucky because I do. It took some time, but with that time, things became gradually clearer. The only unfortunate part is the wait for that little woman to appear.
J.J.
"Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies."
I'd say that the internet is great for flirting and getting to know people (without all those pesky real life inhibitions!) but its better to base any serious relationship at least as much on real-life encounters. Like programming together, or studying math with a "reward system" :)
Guess I'd be the geek chick in this case.. Met my programming, linux-loving, computer-obsessed man on an Online Game (no not UO/EQ;) We got together in the real world.. and have been living with one another, engaged for 11 months now... :)
Yep, it can work
-LP
Any woman who dials 817-4998 and leaves me a page and proclaims themself a geek can get a fabulous dinner of pizza and soft drinks on me! All you have to do is guess the area code. Daring enough to page a stranger in your area code on the off chance of a cheap meal? I feel I should have theme music and a cheesy announcer at this point in the game.
Actually I found my wife thanks to cyberfriends, I was still living in Italy at the time, after 5-6 months of huge phone bills and long, long emails, we decided to get together for a vacation of 3 weeks.
;)
;)
;)
:)
Of course, after she arrived, we kept moving the return date, and did so until her ticket was going to run out, which made it 4 months
I was supposed to remain in Italy until after my M.Sc. graduation, but I couldn't take it and followed her to Canada two weeks after, with my computer (tower case, LOL) in the suitcase, needless to say it took quite a while to get cleared through customs
I finished the thesis, and went back to Italy to graduate, and came back again to Canada two weeks after (we kept in touch via email as usual) and got married on Valentine's day 1998, a little bit more than a year after we met online.
It's funny to remember that for several weeks I actually thought that she was a guy pretending to be a girl just to have some fun
It's also funny to see that despite being labeled as geek for so many years, I was the first one among my friends to get married
-- the cake is a lie
In my personal experiences, meeting someone online can turn out (And for me has) either bad or good, just as meeting them in the real world can. My ex-girlfriend and I met on IRC, on a channel dedicated to the city we live in. We talked on there for several months, became friends, met at a few channel get-togethers, and than started going out together without the get together as an excuse. That relationship lasted about a year, and went pretty well. The breakup was a polite one, we are still friends. (The good news is, that one was my bad experience. =) As far as good goes, I met my current fiance on IRC as well, she had just left my town and moved to Chicago, and was feeling homesick, so she was hanging out in the local IRC channel. We became friends, and got to know each other much better through LONG chats via ICQ. After several plane trips for her from Chicago back to here (Dallas, if you're curious, btw) she decided to move back here.
We are now happily 'living in sin', engaged to be married, and trying to decide on a date (12:01 AM January 1st anyone? =)
I guess, to sum it up, 'dating' online is really no different than dating in 'real life'. You'll get some winners, you'll find some losers. Eventually, as they always say, you'll find someone who is right for you.
Oh, and one more thing, don't go LOOKING for someone. That is the best way to assure you'll never find them. Just be friends to people, in general. Be a nice person, and the person who can make you happy will pick up on this, and want to be more than a friend to you eventually. (If that makes any sense.)
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
Sure hope I didn't just post a comment without a body. Something went wrong. Whatever.
/. So geeks spend their time away avoiding other people IRL? B(MF)S.
The deal is, I do spend _most_of my time behind the Monitor but certainly not _all_ if it. In fact, I just came back from a party (sober - yeah right) to find this article on
Live,
da Lawn
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
Many people will probably consider the parent to this post to be flamebait. However, it does broach an important sub-topic.
If you haven't found a girl who meets your sexual needs, then perhaps you need to keep looking, or need some more patience. They are out there. You'd be surprised what many girls will do, if you believe in open, honest sexual communication. If your partner is unable to open up and communicate, then I suggest you move on -- you'll have more than sexual problems in your relationship.
Don't expect complete sexual openness on a first date. Sexual intimacy is something that grows with time. Particularly in the US, you'll find that many sexual topics are needlessly taboo, and take some time to broach and explore with a would-be partner. Take it slow, and open up only as fast as both you and your partner can handle it.
The point, though, is to open up. I'm not saying you should walk up to a girl and say "Hey baby, wanna do me up the butt?" I suspect that'd earn you nothing more than a dirty look and a slap, even if you had a healthy gulp of Austin Powers' mojo beforehand. Rather, take the time to find out what each other is interested in, and explore each other's boundaries little by little. You'll have plenty of time to play together if you spend the time to build a strong foundation.
--Anonymous, since there are alot of people who are offended by open, honest sexual communication.
Personally, I think this type of issue is pretty sad. We are'nt 13 yo's (I assume not :P). Go out and meet people. Party, have a drink or 20, make a fool of urself, who cares. Start becoming more sociable and go out as often as you can. Sitting infront of an Xray machine all day and night gets some work done but you become boring. Take a look at yourself and ask urself "Am I boring?"
You probably are if you cannot socialize. Life is not about coding. The meaning of life is to simply make it enjoyable coz u dont live long.
Especially when ur young, you need to make the most of life while you can. Live like there is no tomorrow. Party up, have fun and you will meet people. You can't pickup any1 without meeting ppl.
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
Is it an AC secret?
(My first-date test? I unlock the passenger door for her. If she leans over and unlocks my door, that's a Good Thing. Otherwise, well... it's generally been downhill from there.)
too funny. Did you know that 'Mars & Venus on a date' specifically tells the woman NOT to lean over and unlock the driver-side door for the man on a first date? Of course, you may not be wanting to date the kind of person reading those books anyhow....
... And it's hard to break out of a lifetime's habits of shyness and discomfort around the opposite sex. I don't know why it's like that: when I hang around guys (and female friends) we can joke about and have a good time, but women seem (to me at least) to be fragile, where I have to mind my tongue and where everything I say or do is being evaluated. Paranoia? Most probably. I doubt it's out of fear anymore, more likely it's out of habit. I just have this feeling that I'm quite possibly one of the most peculiar people I've ever met, and have such a wide and varied range of tastes that I'm sure I'd offend any potential SO in one way or another (and have seemed to do so reliably since High School).. I also seem to attract psychos, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. How about the young lady whom I met at a local tavern who gave me her email address, then after I sent a message, started sending me naked pictures of herself? So, I asked for a date or two and never heard from her again.. Or the gal whom I met in engineering class and would talk with and study with (oh boy, a nerd-girl, imagine my luck!) for months, lunching occasionally, then when I called to ask her out, her boyfriend picked up while he was cooking breakfast (either that or her ass was made of bacon because there was sizzling swine on the other end of that line).. Now am I the bad guy here? Am I reading too much into our lunchtime socializing? I wear deodorant and shower daily, I chew with my mouth closed, I wear clothes that are largely free of holes or stains and tend to be reasonably presentable (if monochromatic).. Am I screwing up the translation of the signals (or lack thereof)? WHERE CAN I FIND THE DOCUMENTATION ON THESE CURSED 'SIGNALS' I KEEP HEARING ABOUT? WHERE'S THE MAN PAGE? WHERE'S THE RFC? WHERE'S THE FAQ??? I'M TRYING TO RTFM!!!! It's enough to put a boy off entirely, and that isn't nearly the start of my pathetic dating career...
;) but it never really seemed particularly fulfilling when it was good, and when it was bad it was so sordid as to throw me off quite thoroughly.
Online? I used to do that in college (on vaxen oh so many years ago
Your Working Boy,
Wow! I feel like part of Slashdot history!
For people that are terminal introverts, meeting other people is a serious problem. You only feel comfortable opening up among people you know, but people can only get to know you if you open up... I'm sure many of you know the problem.
Somehow, online makes it a -lot- easier to just open up and talk, express yourself... that leads to flamewars, among other bad things, but it can also be a good thing.
I have a personal rule, which is that no matter how intimate we feel online, nothing is decided before we've met iRL. Online is a good way to meet people and to talk, but it's a very different thing from being in someone's rl presence.
It's also a good idea to have a 'safety'; the world does have nutty people out there. Make sure someone knows where you're going, who you're meeting, and expects you to contact back at a particular time. This advice probably applies more strongly to female geeks than males, but it wouldn't hurt men to be a little careful too. And, of course, meet for the first time in a public place, with other people around.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I wanna see the post for this one. hehe. By the way, I am male and have the same fetish as the first poster... More girls than you'd think are quite willing to put on the old rubber love stick for ya! Good luck you two, if it's for real. I certainly hope so.
Flew up to Canada over the summer to stay for a week with a girl I'd only spoken to on IRC/phone. Wouldn't have spent my own money on it (company paid) and wouldn't have gone without backup plans (friends in her area) but I'm happy I did.
No one I've met IRL who I first started talking to on IRC has been quite as I expected them to be, but they've all been very interesting people. If you have good backup plans and a generous travel allowance and know someone who'd like to see you, I'd say go. The worst that can happen is ending with a shattered image of the person you're meeting.
Female geeks tough to find because they are to much like male geeks is right.
From my experience the trouble is that you have to know the female first, such as a classmate or something or other. because I spend so much time in front of my monitors when I do venture out into natural light I find that my topics of conversation often veer towards those that are of interest online. often from this I get strange looks from everyone except those that I know personally and also spend most of their times in the cathode ray glow. Those friends I made a school maintaing it's network. It all boils down to the ratio of male geeks to female. When we enter real life they just aren't common enough for us (or rather me) to even just score (keep in mind that this is from personal experience if you're luckier, I envy you). Standard women just can't understand why someone would spend 12 hours a night staring at text scrolling up a window.
I talked to a girl once. She smelled funny. She said "Would you like fries with that?". Mmmm... Fries....
On the telnet chat server I work on (NUTS is the highest form of communication imho) we have two married couples who moved 500+ miles to be together. I also met my best IRL friend there, along with a girl who was my girlfriend for 17 months. I don't see any harm in it at all.
grep -ri 'should work'
I met my wife in at singles function I went to. We were the first two people there and just hit it off. But before that, most of my online female contacts seem to get more into sex than an actual relationship. Don't get me wrong, sex is great, but a long term relationship is definitely better. The point is that there are a lot of women interested in sex online, but I found a lot fewer that were interested in a real relationship.
I met my first wife on a BBS called Meganet in St. Petersburg, FL (local number, no longer around). Lived together within two weeks of first date, engaged for 1.5 years, married for over 5 years. Divorced in 1994.
Then I met a much better woman pretty quickly on a unix bbs (again a local number) that later became http://matchmaker.com. Engaged for 3.5 years, then got married. We just celebrated our 2nd anniversary, and no problems in sight. Our educations couldn't be more different (literature/poetry/philosophy vs. computers/music), and that leads to both of us teaching each other new things all the time. She is the wonderful kind of old-fashioned woman described in Uncle Robin's Advice article that is there for me, running the bath water and serving me late-night sandwiches!
My first son was with my first wife, and my second son is a child she made with someone else who doesn't care a --bleep-- about the boy, so I treat him like my own.
My second wife cannot have children -- fortunately for her, my sons were part of the package deal with me, so she does get to raise a couple of kids after all.
Tim
I find my those people I know only electronicaly people function well as a contrast to my local social situation. The people i know come from completelydiffrent backgrounds than me, which lends an even greater generality to the observations I make. Luckly "she" is far enough away to make any kind of romance an incredibly impractical idea so the subject has never come up. If it did it would surely raise expectations for the connection too much. The wonderful thigns about purely electronic relationships is that they are very simple if conducted with a little common sense. I think it is a healthy thing to have a few of thiem around along with the usual gaggle of real life friends.
circular reasoning: see reasoning, circular
I am a student at Purdue University, I started a web site back in Janurary called PurdueDating, after it becoming very successfull here, we were shut down by the University for being on their campus. After some debat we redesiged and opened up as CollegeDates.com. We've been around for a while, and have in our opinion been very successful. I've met a few people through the site, and it always makes me feel good when I hear about someone that has been dating someone for the past 6 months and they've meet through my site.
Having been in several online relationships and flings... one lasting for over 1.5 years... I feel I can shed some light on the subject. It takes a special brand of woman/man in order for it to work at all. You have to be willing to put your physical urges aside, at least until you've gotten to know them and (gasp) meet them. It's bittersweet torture... because you have a significant other, but OTOH you're missing out on a lot when you can't see them.
Another pain in the ass is not knowing if someone is being totally honest. This is by no means a factual argument, but I was involved with a girl who more or less lied about everything, and if they are good liars it can last for months before you begin to realize. Being lied to is no fun in any situation, especially in the love department.
My advice when it comes to getting involved online? Though none of my relationships worked out for the best, I won't completely argue against it. However, like others have said on here, don't get too serious about it while it remains exclusively over IRC, ICQ, e-mail, etc etc. Meet them, get to know the actual person, because we all present online personas that are not who we really are. Some aren't very different in person, and others completely change.
So, before you settle down with a wife/husband/significant other, make sure they don't possess some personality trait that will make you regret ever getting involved. I'm stealing someone's quote here, but loving someone isn't about finding their perfections, but appreciating their imperfections.
Cybersex? Puh-leeze, 1/2 the time it's a 14 year-old boy named Jimmy from Wisconsin having some fun at your expense. You're missing out on a lot when you're tapping out animal noises on a keyboard.
The bottom line? If you meet someone and you've got good vibes, meet the person for crissakes! If they're still golden, go with it. Thanks for your time, and thanks for humoring a lovelorn geek who's run the gamut of online relationships.
Adam "Fogie" Fogler -- Professional Paid College Student
Well, "online romances" as they are defined by the media - by having 'cyber sex' and doing all sorts of stupid typing shit doesn't work. But I found my husband online, met him in real life and I couldn't get enough of him.
:).
Coupla years later, our relationship is stronger than when we met and I'm seriously happy
What doesn't work however is getting online to get sexed w/o any relationship. Duh - suprise. People in bars have been trying to figure this one out for ages.
At any rate toodlez
My experience with girls related to computing hasn't been that great. Before there was an "online" (back in the 70s), I was goofing off in the computer lab at a BigTime CS school (think cornfields), when this rather, um, shapely gal walks into the terminal room. All geek eyes on her since she's wearing those hotpants (I told you it was the 70s) and she's obviously going to have back problems really soon, if you get my drift. So anyway, I keep banging away at this, um, Commodore Pet that C'dore put in the lab to entice geeks with, and this gal is RIGHT BEHIND ME STARING AT MY SCREEN where I'm really not doing anything productive... okay, I'm playing. She asks me what I'm doing, and I start mumbling about something inconsequential, when the geek in me kicks in and I blurt out, "Do I know you?" Turns out that she's the grad student house mom of my sister's University co-op house who I had met a couple weeks earlier. So we walk back to the co-op since we're both done anyway; she's "safe" (rats) since she's a house mom and she's going out with some guy that has a Camaro, so I can talk to her without falling down.
Cut to a few years later (after a few years respite from the university), and I see a gal at the computer room who I'd been worshiping from afar in my class, and she asks me about one of our lab problems. At this point in my life I've learned to stare at THEIR shoes when I talk to girls, so I was able to mutter something close to what could be considered English, and she invites me out to eat with her at a Denny's. Hey, the kid is gonna score (or at least get into tryouts)... turns out that she's got a HTH, so again, I find myself with someone "safe", and so she wastes my time for the remainder of the summer (in the middle of shorts season!) being good "friends" on the weekdays, while she goes back to the HTH on the weekends.
But it's progress.
Cut to the fall semester where she brings in one of the two lab chicks at the school into our little friendship, and I'm kinda miffed that there's an interloper into this Relationship That's Going Nowhere, but little by little the interloper and I warm up and end up excluding the HTH gal. But after a longish relationship, she dumps me with no notice for an ubergeek coworker (who was married by the way, but that's another story).
So the score is: no luck with any computer-related romances.
So I go out and reacquaint myself with Mr. Sun and all that there is outdoors, and I meet this gal quite innocently while sailing. And we're still married to this day.
Moral of the story: well there really isn't one, but it is kinda nice not being married to a(nother) geek.
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
Is this thing on? Hello?
i met my g/f online over 2 years ago. She was from Virginia, I from Calif. It was a hard time for us, as she was still in high school and i had just graduated (shes just a year younger than me).
:) ) for a little while, then after shes done w/ college, we're movin back together.
We were friends, then fell in love without ever meeting (may sound stupid to some, but not to her and I). We met and now live together in south carolina. Shes going back to college in TN, and going to live w/ her friend, and I'm goin back to California (I can make more $$ there
And anyway, shes not a geek (she doesnt understand why i hate M$ and love Linux and BeOS and why i like programming so much) but i think i rather her not be a geek, b/c it keeps my worldly interrsts varies. Plus i think shes perfect just the way she is. And thats all I have to say about inet romances - It can work, wonderfully so.
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
I don't recommend trying to meet women on irc, but if you're really that shy, it isn't all that bad. I've actually met a few really cool women on irc, had a 1 year relationship with one of them. The two women I knew the best weren't "geeks" themselves but get along with the geek personality really well. I have met a number of women from irc who I very much *don't* like, but real life results in the same thing anyway. No big deal.
DO NOT become dependant on online socializing. Thats the way I was about 3 years ago, and even if you hang out with people from irc, it's still generally a depressing life. I still chat on irc a bit, but I don't TRY to meet women online anymore. If I happen upon someone who I really seem to get along with (important note: when you talk with someone online, you only "see" a small part of what they really are...you mind tends to make up the rest of what you think they are) I'll still meet them if possible.
Bottom line: DO NOT BECOME DEPENDANT ON ONLINE SOCIALIZATION!! It's just bad. I think most people here will agree.
I met my girlfriend online, on an IRC channel, and moved from Chicago to Texas to be with her. That was two years ago, and it was the best thing I ever did for myself.....she'll say the same should you ask her :)
We spent some months talking online, then on the phone....finally met FTF over thanksgiving of 97, and three weeks later, I had a Uhaul trailer and was on my way down here. We have friends for whom meeting on the Net has been a good thing too.
If she and I were to break up for some reason, I'd probably consider meeting people online to be preferable to meeting ppl IRL. There's no pressure for doing anything besides talking and getting to know each other online, while FTF there are lots of things that can get in the way.
That's my couple of cents.....
I'm not feeling that clever this morning.
Well, it worked for me.
:>
About 4 and a half years ago I met my S.O. online, and it worked fine. Over the 'net it may be a different story, though - it's not a matter of meeting online or not, it's a matter of geography. I met my girlfriend via old-school BBSes (bulletin board systems), where everyone lived in the same geographic region of the state. My gf was about 15 minutes away.
The thing is, while our relationship started online, it grew past that. First we moved on to phone calls, then to meeting in person. I think that on the plus side we got to know eachother as people better online and over the phone (skipping some of the initial guess-work that comes with meeting a person in person). However, eventually that has to give way. I don't really have much faith in cross-country relationships due to the lack of real personal contact. I've known a number of people who have been burnt from that.
The 'net is inherantly global which, while very very cool in its own right, doesn't help relationships too much. With the death of the local BBSing scene(s), I'm not so sure it's as realistic that it'll work.
Another point of possible interest: I'm a computer person, she's not. She'd call the boards regularly for chatroom use, while I was more interested in running my own board or perusing FidoNET. Geeks and non-geeks can and do get along. Trust me.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
About three months ago a female geek posted a story at a popular geek humor website. In a joking style, it told the story of meeting a person from a software company at Linuxworld. Some thing may or may not have happened between the author and said person. The author says it didn't, others say otherwise.
Whatever the truth is, the result of that meeting was somebody at said software company mass-mailing a rather detailed and humiliating description of these [real or fictional] events to every employee of the company.
Responses ranged from the intelligent to "you're fat" to "your a lesbian" to "I checked your webpage and you're ugly". Half bored, and interested in what was causing all the fuss, I visited the authors webpage. It was probably one of the most interesting personal websites I have ever read. I've never actually been interested in anyone else's personal links, but I spent an hour discovering some of the most entertaining content I've ever seen online. Here was an engaging and intelligent personality surely worth the title of geek girl.
Another article was posted on the same site questioning the authors credentials. Things intensified dramatically. Maybe eighty percent of responses to any article would consist of comments concerning this author. Not flattering or friendly - explicit, violent and unoriginal.
Meanwhile, the author stopped writing any more articles. She also stopped defending herself. The comments continued unabatedly for two months. Last week they disabled their comments and write-ins after the volume and content of posts concerning the author became overwhelming.
I revisited the webpage recently. None of the old content exists anymore, presumably after the same sort of filth ended up in her personal email. No more witty links, no more personal stuff, lyrics, poetry, stories, no more 'you know you're Chinese if'... now there's a transcript of Tori Amos's 'Crucify'.
One bright spirit extinguished by so many bored horny fools. The world is a lesser place since you left it, MLM.
Is it y2k compliant? What if one of you isn't? ouch.
---Paul
...or anyone else I know. I'm sure there are a few people out there who are married to someone who used to be an online flirt, so it can happen. Just don't count on it.
;-P I must have bought and ate more lunchmeat during those first two months of flirting than the first 18 years of my life total.
I met my wife when I moved and switched grocery stores. She worked in the deli of my closest grocery store... What can I say, she certianly knew how to handle my meat!
Don't be afraid of leaving the comforting rays of the CRT and venturing out into the world. You never know who you'll run into out there...
For you "exit-only" homophobes... You don't know what you're missing. Seriously. I'm not into guys myself, but I do know what feels good, and that's what matters. And so does my fiancee.... ;-)
A programmer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I`ll turn into a beautiful princess."
He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."
The programmer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I`ll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want."
Again the programmer took the frog out, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I`ve told you I`m a beautiful princess, that I`ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won`t you kiss me?"
The programmer said, "Look I`m a programmer. I don`t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that`s cool."
TinMan
Anyone up for a geek orgy? Of course the rule is all men must bring an eligible woman with them if they want admitted. Those wearing rubbers that look like penguins get to stand on the stage and show off for the crowd. Do you think we should test everyone for geek knowledge before they can get any? Anyone who wants to come reply here and I'll email you the secret location and password! :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Just like going out to the bars, being social at parties, or being social at work, being "social" online isn't going to work for everyone.
I met my husband on a BBS in seattle before we went out to college... "hey, I'm going to school out there", "cool, me too". So we chatted online, found common interests, met IRL before we went off to school, and saw each other a lot while we were in school.
We're still in school, and two years after meeting we married. Worked for me! But that doesn't mean it'll work for someone else...
That was on a BBS (duh I already said that), which is a little different than the "big bad internet" is now. It was local to my area (well, as local as "Seattle" can get), it took a certain style of person to seek out and hang out on a BBS (after the 'internet' had already developed), thus narrowing down the potential "field" of people-i-wouldn't-go-near-if-i-was-paid. People knew each other on the BBS, which you can't really say for IRC unless you scope it down to a single channel (or genre of channels).
I would say we shouldn't narrow ourselves to any field. Just because you know people who hit it off on IRC doesn't mean you will, and you shouldn't necessarily *try*. Be social in any place and you are bound to meet people, eventually someone you hit it off with well.
Going out and being "social" in a bar or at parties isn't for everyone. Some people meet their SO's at work (or in work-related places) without going out of their way to be excessively social. If you realise that your "potential" mate could be anywhere in the world, internet or otherwise, you're bound to find someone. Being social is being social whether it's on the 'net, in a bar, or at work.
Just be careful on the 'net before you go out and meet someone IRL. All (except one) of the internet folks I've met IRL have come from BBS', though I'm sure that will change, and a BBS is quite different from what the 'net has become. If you get a bad feeling about someone on the 'net, listen to it, just like in 'real life'.
-nicole
Long distance relationships are hell. But they can work, and be MORE than worth it. My current girlfriend:
item a: we met on the Swans discussion list.
item b: we became more phone friends than e-mail friends after a few months.
item c: I didn't know she was interested in me, and likely still wouldn't were it not for the Pimpin' Cupid at thespark.com
item d: She moved a time zone closer, we met and . . . .
How geeky is THIS relationship!!!!
But I've met people I thought I was interested in, and changed my mind after meeting them. And people I would date if they lived closer, but didn't think they were worth the distance. And my ex-roommate is now married and living in Japan to his former long-distance girlfriend.
It CAN work. But be careful before you put too much of yourself into it.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Over the summer I began talking via aolim (mm.. gaim..) to a girl from my school who I hadn't know real well. By getting to know each toher better over the net, we eventually hooked up in real life . Conversing online allows you to say things that you may have trouble saying in real life, although important issues should still be discussed face to face in my opinion.
My first online dating experience started off fairly decently, but soured after a few months. It also had the dubious distinctions of being my first-ever serious attempt at a relationship, after years of having crushes on people (indeed, this one was influenced somewhat by a past crush), and of being my first long-distance relationship.
It started around May 1997. I was (and still am) a frequenter of the Usenet group alt.tv.animaniacs (having been a fan of that show basically since Day One), and also of the IRC channel #watertower, and had been for a few months at this point. I saw someone posting on the newsgroup, expressing a desire to get more involved in one of the fan documents. I eventually helped her out, and told her about #wt, and we became close friends. In early 1998, I started to take a liking to her, as it were, and things started clicking very quickly. By August, though, things were falling apart. Both of us were very immature and inexperienced about this sort of thing; I had begged my way into the relationship in the first place (on the false belief that someone female couldn't be special without being a SO), she expected me to be something I just wasn't, and also could be very manipulative and condescending at times. It came to a head when I came down for a weekend, and she said I couldn't stay at her house -- this was a problem because she lives near a resort town, it was a Friday night in the middle of August, and I didn't have any hotel reservations or the money to even get a room on such short notice. I ended up sleeping in my car, and going home the next day. I was reluctant to talk to her for a long while, but eventually got over that...as far as I know, we're still at least acquaintances, but she hasn't been on IRC in a while.
Now, I should note that I'm not very experienced about this; before I got to IRC, I was very paranoid about people I didn't know from HS or church. I'm only now shattering some myths and phobias I've long had about how talking to other people and having friends works. That said, though, there are cases where meeting online does work; some people from #wt have gotten together, with excellent results (one couple is now married).
As of right now, I'm not sure if anything will happen again; my situation at the moment is such that having a SO would be a drain on my time and resources (not to mention the fact that meeting online increases the chances of an LDR substantially), so I'm not really looking. I'm hoping that the next time, things will go more smoothly for me and the person I'm seeing -- whether it starts online or off.
-lee
We didn't start out having netsex, we didn't start out looking to find a girlfriend online. We just found that we liked each other, started talking, and over several months, found ourselves falling for each other - but nade NO plans until we'd met IRL.
That was all we needed; we knew at that point that we'd found the person we wanted to be with.
I'm not feeling that clever this morning.
All I know is one of my roommates's girlfriend is DAMN HOT, is a geek, and they met online. He lives in NY and she lives in CA, but she came to our school (we're sophmores, she's a freshman). I'm pretty sure his situation is rare though.
:)
(Asshole
-------------
The following sentence is true.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
This reminds me of a story about a friend of mine. He used to hang out after work at Kinko's (where he worked at, not because he dug copy shops) to use the computers, since he didn't have one at home. One day, he came up to me and a friend, and began to tell us about how he found this "hot lesbian chatroom" and that he "was the only guy in it" even though he "was pretending to be a woman!" Despite our observation that all the "women" in that room were really men pretending to be women, he refused to believe us. "I can tell! I can tell!" he insisted. The point to this is that when you meet that "woman" who is an 18 year old Asian teenager at a Catholic high school, whose headmistress forces her to perform bizarre bondage rituals, its gonna be a guy. If its that description, and you're on the Undernet, its probably me! ;)
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Okay, I am tired, I will keep this short.
Last Jan., I saw a website I really liked. The guy who designed it (as a showcase of his work) seemed really interesting and intelligent. I wrote to tell him I was impressed, and we struck up a conversation. It was a wonderful correspondance; finally I had a guy who wasn't inmtimidated by my knowledge of computers nor scared by my Star Wars obsession. Long story short- in June, he asked me to visit him, and flew me to NYC from Central Ontario. We got along well, and were very attracted to one another. A good time was had by all. We didn't try anything like a comitted long distance relationship, and now I'm hooking up with a Southern Ontario geek, who also happens to be a musician. I met him through his music.
My advice about meeting geek girls - be the best geek you can be. Sounds cheesy, but smart Really is the new sexy. I don't find receding hair lines a turn on, but they look pretty good if the brain they hover over is stimulating.
I'd much rather you crack MS than buy me chocolate or flowers. Though I'd be more impressed with something realy neat, not cracker nonsense.
And if you have a non-tech hobby, see if you can meet girls that way. I mean, we geek girls do get out ocasionally, too.
We work on computers all day at work. We play with computers often in our spare time. My girlfriend is about my only thread to 'reality'... If she were into computers I'd never get the hell away from these infernal machines! All hacking and no play make Homer something something...
I've never had a serious relationship with anyone who I've met online. However, I've always had a serious online relationship with those I've met in real life. It can be essential to helping maintain a long distance relationship, too.
E-mail is always cheaper than a phone call, and a talk session (or any modern chat protocol-thing, ICQ, AIM, IRC, whatever) is more interactive, and sometimes more clear. (However, has anyone tried that internet phone stuff? I've been meaning to use Speak Freely with someone, but haven't done it yet...)
However you can manage to find people people that intrest you, please do, and remember that computer networks are excellent ways to keep in touch and coordinate events.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I actually met my significant other in a UNIX lab, at college, at about 1:30 AM. I guess i am really lucky, as most of my friends have not been able to find a girlfriend whose eyes don't glaze over when they mention an "dual-p2-600-512-meg-ram-linux-box-with-s-m-p" (thank you kristen:-)
I'm 19, male, and in college, and have yet to go out on a "date" at all. Why not? It's not due to any of the reasons you probably thought above (i.e. I'm not gay, etc), but because I simply have other things to do, and I suspect this is the case with a number of computer people. We're too busy trying to save the world from the evils of Microsoft, posting to slashdot at 11:35PM (CST) or doing other things that have nothing at all to do with computers, but don't seem to interest many females (laser tag and meeting at McDonald's after..well, nevermind the trouble I've gotten into).
So, how accurate am I?
--------------------
Nice try, but Robin's number listed on the webpage you mentioned is not a pager number.
girl geeks are just that, geeks. if you want to find girls you need to look beyold irc chat channels and computer trade shows. a sociable geek is much more likely to find a real girl than a loser.
I know of many peopel who have met peopel over a BBS, would you believe.
Try logging on to Monochrome and you'll find loads of ppl on there who have met someone else and gone out with them even though there was quite a few miles between them.
I've never gone in for that, but it is interesting to watch those that have.
Some you can pin down to a stereotype but others you can't because they do have a real life outside of the BBS.
It certainly is not an evil, I can be sure of that because one or two people have gotten married after meeting people on Monochrome. Then again several have got together, done stuff together and then fallen out again in a big way.
To make one a success it demands that a) both are sensible mature adults who understand what is going on, b) that it is possible to actually meet or at least phone regularly, c)that no-one pins too much on anything and takes it as it comes and d)that you're the right people for each other in the first place!
I guess I've always found on-line relationships to be somewhat cold until you hear a person's voice on the other end of a phone line or meet them in person.
At the end of the day you have to remember you're talking to a person who will be a bit like you with their own thoughts, feelings and so on.
If you can't inject a vital spark of humanity in there then it will neverget past the initial stages without a lapse into formula and predictability.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
Almost all of my current friends I met on-line, either directly or indirectly. "Meeting people online" is a means, not an end. I met my most recent girlfriend (albeit rather rocky, but we are still best friends) when I fixed her computer. The one before that I "met" when she directed a three-page flame at me. C'est la vie. People act differently in person than they do on-line... much differently. When behind a screen, they shed inhibitions and shells, and can open themselves up. It's usually pretty easy to tell when someone is bullshitting you. And, hey, talk is cheap. But it's often all a lot of us have to give. If people are more willing to speak about themselves on-line, then that is that. I have but a few criteria I look for in a SO.. but they are odd enough that it's one hell of an uphill battle to find someone. And the only way to find someone is to get out, meet people, spend hours conversing.. and find out what makes them tick. Without the pretense of "I'm looking for a relationship." I view people as books.. one has to take the effort to turn their pages. But admittedly, one really nice thing about on-line conversations via IRC or ICQ or whatever is that you can multitask.. consider your answers, choose the right words, and use it to lighen up a dreary day at the office. But, um, anyway. There's no quick way... good things take time. Perhaps even a lifetime. - Pizza
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
I have had an online romance before. I honestly loved that girl, who shall remain anonymous (not like she reads /., never had a geek girl before). So it's not like I don't know what an online romance is like. If you really love the person, cybering can get pretty steamy.
But nothing compares to seeing the look in your lover's eye in that passionate moment during sex, or the warm feel of their skin against yours on a cold night in a warm bed. For guys, nothing compares to seeing your girl's face light up when you buy her flowers for no reason other than to show how much you love her.
There's no way text or video chat can ever come close to that...
-Warren
biggest mistake i ever made in my life
it was worth it though. i think..
//Insert Meaningfull Quote Here
I've had soc 101 so I feel I'm an expert in this arena, and based on a few years of meeting chicks online, feel I must contribute. One thing I've found to be true of both sexes who are looking for a date online is that in most cases there's a good reason. I don't think it's unfair to call it a last resort, in spite of the undeniable benefits of getting to know someone before appearance comes into it. Granted that, I think most people turn to the net for love when the usual channels aren't working. This applies to myself as well, and it doesn't necessarily mean you have a hunchback.. Given that physical attraction is, for the vast majority of the population, a requirement for romance, it seems like a lot of effort just to find out the other person ain't that good looking. Of course, if like me you're just spending work time doing it, nothing lost. And there's always the longshot that pays off. One problem with it is that I think many geek guys are a bit intimidated by women, and the role men are supposed to play when picking one up. It's much easier to be interesting on irc at 20 or even 40 wpm than to try to think of stuff to say to a woman when you're face to face. That's a double-edged sword though, as it can make your RL self even less adept at making a good impression. I know if I email a girl for too long before talking on the phone it's a real transition to be charming at full speed, but maybe I'm just slow. I think the chances of finding someone you can get along with isn't all that great, but it's no worse than in the carbon community. for me it's all moot, because the only time I've ever fallen in love is when I wasn't looking.. My suggestion to all you lonely guys is to go out with your friends and have a good time, go to places where there are women, and you'll eventually find one. And take a chance and talk to that cutie in the black leather boots.. the worst that can happen is you'll crash and burn, (I know) but you'll get more comfortable approaching women.
"hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now."
I met my wife at Arby's, where we both worked during our high school years -shudder at the thought-; been together ever since (over 10 years). Aarrggghh! I still have the same jacket I used to wear to work. It just hangs unused in my closet, still reeking from those unmistakable Arby's grease stains! I guess I keep it to remind me how much I hated working in the fast food 'industry', just in case I get lazy and start playing too much Tombraider when I should be working (can't wait for Tombraider 4, coming this November hopefully); lest I slip back into that particular circle of Hell. Now, why did you have to make me drudge up all those repressed memories? My wife Teresa was the only good thing that came out of that place. That's my story.
I have a personal rule, which is that no matter how intimate we feel online, nothing is decided before we've met iRL.
:) Being a rich geek can also come in very handy for those nightly, hours-long phone calls & frequent plane tickets, as the last successful LDR I was in was during college, so we didn't get to see each other very often...
This cannot be stressed enough. I've had numerous online relationships (maybe even more than started IRL ), mostly thru people I've met on newsgroups, or people who started emailing me after seeing my website (a fan site). Many of them included meeting IRL, and of those, a few turned into nice, long relationship, and the rest ended very soon after the first RL meeting.
That said, the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone even considering an online relationship is this: just because you can find a lot of things in common before meeting doesn't mean you're perfect for each other- keep in mind that you haven't really met them yet! Every major failure was attributed to one thing: building things up wayyy too high before the actual RL meeting, so that we were both set up for disappointment.
My current relationship is long-distance, and with someone I knew a little bit online before meeting IRL at a concert w/ a group of other online fans. Perhaps one of the reasons things have worked out so well is that we didn't spend that much time talking online before actually meeting IRL. We met almost a year ago, & now I'm planning on moving there for a while (pending a telecommute-OK from work, heh) until we figure out where we both want to live more permanently. We spend lots of time on irc or ytalk, & I even installed linux on her poor old 486 (shortly after which the windows partition crapped out & became completely useless).
Anyway, it is possible to find someone online, and being online certainly helps LDRs. It's even possible to find 'fun' (i.e. non-committal) relationships online. Just don't let the fact that it's easier to talk online allow you to rush into things before you're ready.
Ik met the love of my life on the internet, via a newsgroup. We then met IRL and then learned each other better via email. The real romance was started IRL though. Alas, she's no longer my SO, but it may work, and I am very glad that I met this woman via the internet.
Well, if luck does exist, then i believe i've had some... around here i'm considered a geek (that is, a guy who knows WAYY too much about computers and the like), and i'm regular looking (which means i don't scare off women), but i'm not the shy type. I've met a lot of women in chat rooms at IRC from Undernet (yeah i know it's a risk, but it's sometimes worth it!).
:)
:)
I've had relationships with two women that i've met in there... one lasted for 3 months, but we had some differences, and the other one i'm still on it, going for 1 1/2 years and still no real trouble brewing!
I've found out that one probably has more luck with women who:
1) have the same tastes as you (that means DON'T BLUFF!)
2) you don't have to lie for her to like you (either online or offline)
I've also found out that most women prefer offline relationships than "cyber-relationships", and feel that guys who can mostly express themselves online have lots of trouble getting a 2nd date
Just be yourself!
My story starts over a year ago now, But first a little background. I'm a geek, been one since about the age of 7 when I first discovered my parents old (at that time new) Texas Instrument computer and an old book that taught the BASIC language. From there I jumped to an Apple IIgs, and then from there a Mac in High school. I was tormented for being a geek all through school, elementary the most, high school was better once the other kids discovered that I could program games for them. Not once in highs school did I ever have a date, let alone talk to a girl more then about 15 words max. Ok, enough with the background, now time for what you're reading this for... Last October I enrolled in a Computer Systems Specialist course, and for the first time I saw someone who I was actually interested in, I mean she was everything I could ever have hoped for. 5'3, red hair, freckles, slightly hyperactive personality, and above al, a geek girl, but of course being the geek that we all are (most of us anyway) I was to darn scared to even speak to her, I worshipped from afar hoping beyond hope that she might possible make the first move. And she did, for an athletic, rugged, everything I'm not guy in my class (read jerk), don't ask me why he was in a computer class, but he was. I knew he was a jerk, most people in my class knew he was a jerk, but for some reason she didn't see it. During on of the class' break times she was outside with "him" and a few of her friends. I was sitting on a bench several feet away when she called and waved me over, heart leaping I went over and we all talked for the time that we had left. For the months after that we grew to become what I thought was pretty good friends, in hope that she would relies how much of a jerk he was a turn to maybe to me instead. He and She grew steadily closer though, to the point where they were discussing moving in together, she wanted to get married. About 4 months ago my classmates and found out how much of a jerk he really was, he had been seeing someone else, everyone once again knew it but her. When she found out what he was doing in was hell. She threatened suicide, and I thankfully managed to talk her out of it. The whole time (almost a year now), me feelings for her grew ever stronger, and I think she began to pick up on them. One day she handed me a handwritten note, my heart leapt, almost I was sure then entire building could hear it beating. So I read the note, "I want to thank you for being here for me when I needed you, you are a great friend, but that's all you are to me. You don't have to be with me every day, I'll be ok now". Once again my heart leapt, but in the opposite direction, I just stared at the note, not believing the words there staring back at me. I didn't know what to say, I was devastated, I now know what it's like to have your heart ripped out and ground into chunky salsa upon the floor in front of me. School is over now, and I'm still not over her. I think I just need to get as far away from her as possible, so I'm moving to another country. No, I'm serious, plans are made, tickets booked, passport and visa ready. That country is Australia to b exact, I need to do this, I need to go in search of myself, and in search of someone to be there for me when I have something as bad as what happened to her, happen to me. This is an example of "real life" that I hope doesn't happen to any of you, it really hurts. Wish me luck, and maybe "moving to another country" could be the technique you're looking for. After all, my Pennsylvania Dutch accent has got to get me some attention in the land of Oz... Best of luck to everyone who has the patience to read this, wish me the same, I'm going to need it.
Well..just my 5 cents..
All my gf's i ever had (all 7 - no that many) - i met online.
Some came to be one night things..
Some turned out to be a long term relationships
I am now over 3 years in a relationship that started as a quick
chat on IRC..We met pretty soon and the rest is history:)
Well, i used to be cute which helps too:)
Being a geek makes you fat fairly fast though..:)
Now if only we had a discussion about geek lifestyle:)
Back when I first got online in 1995-1996, I was afraid to go anywhere near IRC or chat rooms of any sort -- I was paranoid about people that were "unclean" (long story), and was buying into the horror stories that were circulating about horny old men posing as attractive girls and such online. Eventually, I found my way to a channel about the show Animaniacs (well, nominally), and little by little, my fears disappeared.
You're right; you can meet some decent people online. You just have to keep your brain in gear and watch out for obvious trolls and such. IRC is good for getting to know people in the sense that you *have* to "talk" to communicate -- you can't judge them by their appearance (at least, not in the same way as RL) or their voice or anything else. And since you have to talk, deepness is pretty much enforced, assuming people like and trust each other enough to confide things (and assuming people care about each other for more than, say, netsex).
-lee
It is the most exciting thing you can do, the feelings you have the week before you finally meet are indescribebly. I met Layla on ICQ and she only lived 4 hours away(Holland). So after 2 weeks of continues chatting we decided to meet. Having never seen her and having developed feelings for this special girl, I almost couldn't wait. The tension build by the second. Finally it was the time to step in the train and wait 4hrs. It were both the best and the worst hours of my life. Like you are about to jump out of an airplain but something is holding you for 4hrs until you can finally jump. I saw her for the first time and I was shocked. I didn't know if I liked her. My feelings were all messed up. She wasn't the most beautifull girl in the world, but I fell for her anyway. Met her parents that day, and stayed overnight. We were had a relationship for 3 months, but were both too different to continue our relationship. This is about 6 months ago.
I always hear/read men state that they should stay away from "online" female relationships, but what's the real reason why? Do most men not trust themselves to be faithful to a female they cannot physically interact with? Conversing over the computer allows both partners to understand each other more and establishes a stronger mental bond between them. People tend to talk and share more about themselves while on a computer than in "real life". When a man and woman begin their relationship online, they strengthen their understanding of each other and become great "friends" first. That is the formula for a long-lasting relationship.
As a personal experience, I met a man of the same "geeky" interests as me online(Programming, Linux, Networking, etc.) For a little over half a year, we shared our goals, dreams, ideas and became the best of friends. Time came for meeting (a distant FL->CA flight) and the final physical bond was made on top of the already strong mental foundation. Surely enough, as soon as we met, I packed my bags and got an apartment with him. We have been living together for over a year and plan on marriage.
I truly thank the "computer" for the blossoming of this relationship. I would have -never- have met any man of my preferred "geeky nature" where I lived before. I see no reason why someone would limit themselves to people located close by so that they can 'physically' bond with them first, when that's definately not the most important part of a relationship.
My wife and I met over the I-net BEFORE the days of Web. Back then, newsgroups such as alt.personals were very popular (and entertaining).
We each went to two different universities on the east coast. I posted an anonyous message out of curiosity and out of the 7 replies, she and I made a match.
We dated long distance for several months until graduation, then got engaged. She got a programming job near me and a year later we married. We've been happily married now for 6 years.
Geek romance does work. Even though the I-net has evolved significantly since then, I think it is still possible to find true love.
Enjoy!
I can't believe the number of people who have had online romance experiences. :)
/. puts this article on.
A lot have said not to go online "looking" for it and I can't agree more.
I started going online to geek... and I met this guy who was kind of in the same place in life as me at the time (we're both working on our degree's) well instead of talking about computers.. we started talking about classes, school, profs, and our significant other's. I guess it turned out to be a great place to say what we really felt. like... what did I care what I told this guy... it's not like I was ever going to meet him right? wrong
In the midst of talking about the people we were "supposed" to be in love with... a lot of what we really wanted started to surface. And it turned out to be the same things for us both. So I did it... I bought a plane ticket and flew accross borders for this guy. If not for love (we had no expectations)... if not for love.. for fun because we were such great friends.
It was like... magic. He came up to me at the airport and I felt like I was lifting off the ground. soul mate stuff.. definately soul mate stuff.
I want to marry this guy when I'm finished university. But I don't think it's going to happen. I have decided to cut all ties from him because it hurts too much. The one person in this world who really makes me happy... we are head over heals in love.. I can't be close to.. and it just plain sucks. I've never been the type of girl to sit around waiting for a guy to phone... and I've found myself turning on my monitor to see if he sent me an ICQ msg... this is just not me. The weird thing is I just decided this this weekend and
But remember...
To make the journey and not fall deeply in love?
Well, you havent lived a life at all.
But you have to try
Because if you haven't tried,
You havent lived.
only time I have ever posted anonymously
I'd expect online romance to be as successful as online job searches. About 4% of people got jobs through the internet last year. I used to participate in online dating services as an undergrad. Nothing ever came of it and since then I figured there are better things to do than lead around a Mary Cleaver wannabe.
People, my parents, etc.. wonder why I am 18, never had a date, and a virgin. My answer to them and other people is "I'm a geek." That is, I dont tend to go to parties and I don't socialize a ton. I spend my time doing homework, messing with my computers, and hanging out with other geeks. I probably don't try enough, but, I am a woose. Point is, I am generally a sterotypical geek. Dont get any exercise and as such I am very self concious of weight. In the end, it is a lack of trying that keeps me away from the fems.
That's just me... *shrug*
At least not the computer kind.
My "counterparts" may well spend much of their time at a computer screen, but I don't really notice all that much. Women who spend as much time at a computer as I do are really kind of a turn-off for me. Now, I certainly don't mind if she spends inordinate amounts of time on whatever her favorite hobby is, as long as it's not getting into the nitty-gritty of computers. I used to think that somebody who did would make the perfect match for me, but now I realize it is not so. And no, I don't know why.
As for where I meet women, generally either in class or at dances. I've been going to classes all my life, and only have gone to dances a few times thus far (though I plan to go more often!), so I can't comment on their relative merits.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I met my current girlfriend through ICQ and it has been the healthiest relationship I've been in. However, I can't recommend putting too much expectation in finding love through internet. I started going to college 10 years ago and I've known many couples who met online. It seems about 1 out of 10 seemed to blossom into something with a future. There are many reasons why this happened:
:)
1. Introverts are attracted to Internet. A lot of relationship grew out of mutual loneliness. I'm not saying all introverts are lonely, but a lot of them are.
2. Lack of accountability. I've seen both sides. I don't think women are better than men in this. When you don't see the other person, it's easier to forget about them. It's hard enough to find people with honesty and integrity in real life nowadays, what do you think of your chance of finding one in a "Young swinging professionals" chat room?
3. Geographic barrier. Rarely you meet someone you like online who lives within an hour drive from your place. This leads to a long distance relationship, which is another can of worm by itself.
I was very skeptical about my own relationship because I was too aware of the problems that may come with it. I only have a couple of advises for those who're thinking of going into it:
Don't Force It
Just like any other relationships, let things grow naturally. It's also important to handle things more delicately than usual. Prepare for the chance that you may not be suitable for each other after all. Women are also too often getting emotional over doing something that's been sickeningly glorified by movies like You've Got Mail.
Maintain your cool
Most geeks I know (including myself) are fiercely loyal to their partners. Sometimes we misplace our trust and get blinded by red flags. Always be tough on yourself and ask those hard questions. Sure, you could end up overanalyzing it, but I've never seen one that failed because of it. Most failures are caused by "playing by heart" too much and not enough "listening to reason".
Online and long-distance relationship is not for everyone. Even if you think you can handle it, make sure your partner can too. I've mentioned honesty and integrity before. Other helpful qualities are maturity and good communication skills.
As I said before, I can't recommend this for everybody. My girlfriend and I are very aware of what's going on around us. We saw other couples crashed and burned and we tried to learn from their mistakes. We talked to couples who have gone through the same process and made it, and we tried to draw inspirations from them. Sure, it sounds like a disney movie, but it works for us. It never crossed our mind that we could skip all those troubles by asking slashdot about it.
wan
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but what the hay (please don't moderate me down, this is just a lighthearted discussion anyway, right?). I was watching this great show last night about mazes (don't ask), and they were trying to figure out the origin of mazes and why they are appealing to us and stuff. It got me to thinking that life is like a maze. You never really know where you're headed until you've already gone down the wrong path (ooh deep). The cool thing about a maze is that you can always backtrack and try a different way until you finally work your way out. Life doesn't always give you that option.
I guess my point is that relationships are also the same way. You have to try out different things and find out what works for you without being afraid to make a few boo-boo's. You can't know the answer until you've taken a chance and made some mistakes. Thus, there is no ONE best way to find your SO. That's what makes life so interesting, though. No two lives are exactly the same. For some, online romance works. For others, it will never work. That's why I always take advice with a grain of salt. I live my way, and that's the only way to live!
Hmmm.. maybe there's another late night documentary on mazes. Where's that TV guide.
I met my wife at work.
I have wondered the same thing myself. Why is it that every week /. posts a new "advice to the lovelorn" story, but never does anything constructive about it? One would think that Slashdot could put match.com out of business so fast it'd make their heads spin.
The people in the real world are the ones that matter. I met my current girlfriend at a party (which sounds so lame when I say that out loud, and she and I both know that :), and it's safe to say that that party had nothing to do with computers. But, then again, I don't want to date "me". That is, I don't want to date a computer nerd, even though I might be one.
Life is full of wonderful and interesting people. The last thing I need to do is cheat myself by limiting myself to people that are just like me. With that said, there are certain areas that you and your mate must be compatible in. For instance, the important things to me are intelligence, wit, and ability to challenge me. My mate must have those qualities, but it's important to me that she be different than me in other ways. I want to experience other things in life. I've been doing the computer thing just fine without her help, but hey, I've always needed a partner for swing dancing!
My current girlfriend knows what the web is, and checks her email all the time, so she definately knows what computers are. If I had to explain to her what a mouse was all the time, I think things wouldn't go too far. But I digress...
The point I'm trying to make is that the people worth putting your arms around at the end of the day are out in the real world. If you want to meet people, get away from that monitor sometimes. Attend parties, go out bike riding, buy a snowboard, go to concerts. At these activities, you'll find and meet attractive people that already have stuff in common with you, because they were at that same function!
But hey, that just worked for me. YMMV.
When I was in H.S., my now-fiance had a terrible
crush on me (I had one on her, too). Being
typical geek, lacking a clue in the social skills
department, I had no idea until one day about 3
years after we graduated, she decided to
track down my Email address and start writing me.
If she had called me on the phone and said "Hey, I
had a crush on you in High School", I probably
would've hung up - would've thought she was
joking. Email was safe.
Even though we knew each other pretty well before
she started writing, there's no way I would've
thought of her as anything but a friend if the
Email hadn't flowed so freely between us.
I still have some trouble saying things in person
that I can discuss freely when I write, and
she's OK with that.
--
Amazingly enough, my (now) fiance was the THIRD
woman (there was a fourth person as well, but um,
not a woman) to do that to me -- makes me
wonder why nobody can say something like that when
I'm still accessible.
I guess my lesson is, you never know what the
people around you are thinking. I think asking
might actually help. =)
--
PS I'm not trying to brag about looks or prowess
or whatever. I'm a fat schmoe with pasty skin
and thick glasses. Just a lucky fat schmoe.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I first ran across my wife when I was an op on an Internet BBS and she was a bewildered new user, back in 1992. We didn't meet in person 'til 1993 (by which point we'd talked enough to know each other's gender and geographic location), and yah, it involved some travel initially. We've been an item for 6 years now, though, and married half that.
We even have a baby (her name is Tera, but we call her Terabit in true /. fashion), who was fortunate enough to load up on cuteness from her mom (my wife has a degree in dance and also modeled during college, looks good). :)
So yeah, it can definitely work.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I'm fascinated by the idea of young ladies being transformed into statues. But so far I haven't figured out how to actually make it happy.
By the way, I'm not an AC. I'm only posting anonymously because my reputation in the Slashdot community would be DESTROYED if the public found out about my petrification fetish.
So.... I'm posting as anonymous..... because I'm a coward....... well, okay. In a sense, I AM an AC.
Cool stuff.
PETRIFY ALL THE HOT YOUNG WOMEN!!!
Turning women to stone is DEFINATELY one of the best things one can do.
WOW, is it ever sweet.
I LOVE petrified stone girls!!!
It often surprises me when I read or hear of people (almost always guys) complaining that geeks have little luck with the opposite sex. I, along with many of my female friends (and one or two male pals) find geeks extremely attractive. There is something very sexy about men who are highly intelligent but who are less comfortable with themselves as social creatures-- it is this rather paradoxical state of affairs that makes geeks very interesting, at least for me.
Certainly different women have different tastes, and not all go for swaggering drool-some males. If one is a geek, one should capitalize on what makes geeks sexy which is I think, the fact that they are not entirely comfortable with women who are potential romantic/sexual partners. It's a rather contradictory thing to say I know-- how does one exploit the very thing that makes one unable to exploit opportunities?-- but I really do believe it works, er, at least for some. One's character and personality can then continue the charm offensive once one has gained the attention of the intended.
I am currently seeing a geek, and although he constantly frustrates me with his lack of romanticism or sensitivity, he also helps me keep in mind what it is that I want most out of a relationship, and which are those "peripherals" that I can do without even if I rather wish I have them as well. It is not so much a matter of compromising as recognizing when one has found something long-sought, even if it comes in a exterior package sweet AND despairing.
I've had a relationship that started through the Internet. I learned a few things:
Online communication only shows a little slice of the whole person. Thus, I figure it's best to wait until a RL meeting before committing to anything.
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
I spend anywhere from eight to twenty hours a day either on a computer or within ten yards of one. This is for a variety of reasons, some work-related, some game-related, but mostly, I've come to realize, for escapism. This is also why I avoid chatrooms- why do I need to actively seek out repetetive, monosyllabic conversation when I can get the same by riding the bus? I have no use for it. But I have attempted the online-romance thing a handful of times.
Fairytales are just that and have little or nothing to do with real life. In point of fact, I do not think that the "ideal" romance is ever going to be found on the Net. Romantic relaitonships, particulalry long-term ones, are in need of a physical component for them to last. So naturally, in the Quest For Intimacy, this was mentioned frequently. I neither want nor have the time to waste on an e-lationship. Every "romantic" encounter that has begun through the net has, in due time, failed completely.
Most of this is due to communication and how myself and the person in question reacted when face to face. Begging may do it for some people, but I find it highly offensive- it killed one relationship on the spot. Not something you need to worry about on email, the phone, or in a chat, but a lethal idiosynchracy when encountered in RL.
Every minute spent in a chatroom discussing anything other than business is another minute valuable and possibly nonexistant social skills are being wasted. While the net is the best place to make contacts, ALL of the interesting people I have met and persued anything resembling a relationship with have been met OFF line. If you're looking for someone to "be with" on the net, you need to ask yourself: "Am I someone a (gender) would WANT to be with?" Most of us are either unconsciously aware of the truth, we just need to realize it. If the answer is "no", then you need to spend more time becoming acceptable to yourself and functional within whatever it is you call "society". You are not going to become some sort of cassanova by spending fifteen hours a day on IRC.
I HAVE learned a few things from online attempts at romance. They are repetative, frequently irritating (particularly in the case of bad grammar or spelling), and have yet to prove rewarding in the long run. I'm not exactly the best person in the universe to ask about online romance- I was raped by a psychologist of the same sex (thirty years older than me), and have been attempting to recover and work through my confusion for the past two years. The internet has not proven to be a valid option. If you have problems or are trying to hide from something, be anything other than yourself in an online relationship, the only possible longterm result is damage.
Met my wife at work.
Walked in one day and walked right past her. (she was new)
Went and sat down at my desk and started to work.
Got up a minute later (just flat out had to) and introduced myself to her.
First time in my life I ever felt I just HAD to introduce myself right away.
All my previous gf's and so's I always took my time from
when I met them first, till getting around to knowing them better.
Not so with my wife. Saw her... Had to meet her...
We hit it off famously (despite my lack of haircuts and ratty stained clothes) and were married appx. 2 months later.
She's a geek grrl (though she won't admit it) as well as quite a sophisticate.
Oh yeah, don't judge a book by it's cover either.
I love looking good for my wife and she appreciates it as well, but
I attract young female attention when I dress nice. As a result I normally wear ratty clothes most places when she's not with me.
It's interesting to see the types of people that dismiss me
out of hand when I dress that way. Then note their
reactions when they meet me in my 'Presentable' state.
Personally I find most of it disgusting. *shrug*
REAL people usually don't pay attention to dress.
There are good geek guys out there... most of us just don't
want to be bothered to get the really pretty feathers out of the
closet from behind all our computer equipment.
All I can say is... talk... to a lot of people....
The more you do... the better prepared you will be when
what you want comes around.
I never did before... but I'm a firm believer in Destiny now.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Sorry nerd-boys but, as I recall, Dilbert exposed a clandestine operation by NASA in which they had transported all the Women Who Love Engineers to the moon. Thus, unless you can convert your cubicle into a rocket and go there yourself, you're pretty much out of luck.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Signal 9 : KILL
Signal 11 : Post a few dozen vaugely interesting ill-informed posts to Slashdot each day in the hope that maybe one or two of them will get moderated up.
it's a little plant called cannibus sativa. when smoked it produces the petrification effect.
Can it really turn women to stone? Where can I get some of it? How much does it cost? Are there any laws governing turning people to stone? Do they have to consent? Is sex with statues legal?
Thanks for any help......
being another of the call-center-employee types, i can't help but wonder what your boss thinks about relationships in the workplace...
i just got an email from mine that says if any male employee tries to flirt with any female employee, they'll be written up for misconduct.
maybe this is another topic entirely, but i'd like to know what kind of policies other people's employers tend to have on this subject, as finding geeks of the opposite sex is usually easier in an environment where geeks flourish... like tech support call centers.
I just got back from a night full of drinking, socializing, and other non-geekish things with some friends. Granted, I'm a full blown geek, having a life as a programmer and all, (and having a humongous LAN at home... well, by 10 port hub standards ;) It's important for everyone to remember: while you MAY find someone online, don't COUNT on it. Relationships HAPPEN. The more you look, the less you find. Personnally, I've NEVER had a geek gf... all my gf's have always been non-geeks. But it's all good! I have a need for a complement. I don't think I could ever go out with a girl that's exactly like me beacue I don't think I could stand her. FIND A GIRL that's for you. Odds are, you won't find her online however. GO OUT, have fun with friends. You just might meet the girl you're looking for.
Goddammit... "begs the question" is not bloody used that way...
Two of my best friends met their now-spouses online... and both are expecting their first children early next year!
Me, I met my sweetie because of the internet, although not on it -- he was the sysadmin of the ISP that I did tech support at... ah, love at first "hey, this guys mailbox is fscked... can you fix it?"
-d
Looking online just sucks. All I ever met were gay guys, teenage girls, fat women, christians, and other people I want nothing to do with. My fucked up work schedule and poor location for femalez has convinced me I just need to spend more time with Jenna Jamison until I move somewhere cool and get a day job. -da beast!
Net romance is BAD! Especially so if it's a long distance thing.
I've been down the netmarriage road and looking back at the experience i can only feel revoltion and repugnance at how depressing my life must have been.
Get off mud! Go buy a dog and take it for a walk. Maybe you'll meet a nice flesh girl in the park.
According to psychologist David Keirsey, the ideal match for any individual is someone who is a near opposite in personality. First, rate yourself in the following four categories: 1) Are you talkative or quiet? If you're talkative, givee yourself an "E", if you're quiet, give yourself an "I". 2) Do you mostly pay attention to what is, or what could be? If the former, give yourself an "S", if the latter, an "N". 3) Do you rely mainly on your feelings ("F") or your thoughts ("T")? 4) Do you like to focus on what you do ("J") or do you like to experiment and jump from activity to activity ("P")? Now, see what all the letters are. To find your ideal match, switch all of the letters except for the second one. So it should go something like this: you mate INTJ ENFP INTP ENFJ ENTP INFJ ENTJ INFP ISTP ESFJ ESTP ISFJ ISFP ESTJ ESFP ISTJ And vice versa. Just look for these four qualities in others, and if you see the right match, spend time with that person. You can read more about this on www.keirsey.org or in the books "Please Understand Me" and "Please Understand Me II", also by Keirsey.
A good portion really are women. Nowadays even more so than years ago. I couldn't guess at any percentages, but certainly at least 50% (i.e. "most") of the women in e.g. #lesbiansex, #bifemsex, etc are for real.
Some people do a really bad job of it. Some do a really good job. It's impossible to know for sure without external verification.
If you're a man pretending to be a woman so that you can talk to lesbians, why should you really care that you're really talking to another man pretending to be a woman? Do you think that's such a horrible thing? Then why are you doing it? And you certainly shouldn't think that it's impossible - it's an obvious idea, that many many thousands of people have come up with independently.
I wish I could nondestructively temporarily alter the sex others perceive me as in real life.
When I first met my 'gal, I didn't even notice her looks. It wasn't until after we'd gone out several times that I finally noticed just how beautiful she is. Which, I hope, brings me back to my point that physical appearances are not always important.
(We did not meet on-line...we met at a (university) marching-band retreat.)
me == femgeek.
S.O. == boygeek.
we met on irc two years ago.
a month or so later, he flew across the country to take me to a ball. at first, i wasn't sure. before the end of the weekend, we knew...
we were an item.
i started flying to cali every 3-4 weekends to see him, while every other night we talked on the phone for a couple of hours. it was hard, esp. with me in grad school. somehow, we kept going. for a year and a half, in fact.
a few months ago, i moved to cali. he flew east to help me on the drive. on the way west, he proposed. i accepted. the ring is beautiful. we live together. our two year anniversary is coming up.
irc sucks now, but i thank god for the days when it was ok, cause look what it brought me.
...and they lived happily ever after.
I overheard her say "i would never marry someone unless they knew everything about computers" so I made my move, exchanged icq #'s and wallah.
Online chatting isn't a replacement for IRL contact, but it's a pretty good start. It's a nice place to meet people. With a little luck you can find someone of the desired gender to have an intelligent conversation with, and you can't ask for too much more of a starting point for a potential relationship. The thing to avoid can be getting to know someone TOO well online... because if you get too used to talking online, it's awkward when you finally meet someone IRL. HAve a few IRC chats, then a few phone conversations, then maybe ya can meet IRL. Really, the key to relationships (IRL or online) is this: don't LOOK for one. Trying too hard is the worst thing you can do. Just meet people and see where things head. If you're an interesting, intelligent person a few of those friendships are sure to move a little further at some point. :-)
... everybody gets one dance
There's something extremely important that has been mentioned in passing, but not in any sort of depth. Females on IRC (or net personal ads, the most common places for people to meet) are, on the average, substantially less attractive than society as a whole. i.e. the odds are good that the woman you meet on IRC will be fat or ugly. That's why they're meeting guys on IRC, because there's something wrong with you. That's why we're meeting them on IRC - there's something wrong with us. Our problem is that we aren't able to (or don't want to) go up to women everywhere we go and try to hit on them. Their problem is that guys don't ever hit on them. (that's how things work the vast majority of the time - the male must take some steps to pursue the female). I know some very attractive women - they constantly get hit on, honked at, and so on. Ugly/fat ones get none of this attention.
It's difficult to tell how someone looks from a picture, and someone who does not like how they look may purposely hide undesirable aspects in pictures. (e.g. face shots for fat girls, low-resolution for skin problems). IRC girls will lie about their weight frequently - they need only feel that if they told the truth, the relationship would be would be hopeless. So the lie is no risk.
There are a few reasons that an attractive companion is desired by many. Those who do not require one, or who have highly non-standard ideas of attractiveness are quite lucky. (how many fat women I wish I could just not be repulsed by.. It would change my life vastly for the better). But most people will find that an attractive woman can arouse them far better than an unattractive one. Something about 250 pounds of jiggling blubber is more nauseating than sexy. You will gain the respect instead of disdain of your friends. (People pretending that they do not care what others think are frequently denying a part of them, similar to homophobes. It is important to use what others think of you in gauging what kind of person you are. Even those who reject that must realize that people will treat you better if they respect you). It is nice to be able to stare at your attractive girlfriend and marvel at her beauty. If you can even manage to love your fat one, love can only make her seem slightly more attractive - beauty to awesome beauty, but grotesque fatness only to tolerable fatness.
So, watch out for those IRC girls. Bring your favorite intoxicant when you go to see them, if they're not attractive then you will be able to numb/alter your senses enough to want to have sex with them. (Which usually they will encourage, since they have noticed a pattern, sober men don't want to sleep with them).
I met my girlfriend on IRC, and we've been going out for over 16 months. She lives about 20-30 minutes away from me, so we only get to see each other about once a week (due to school and distance). We talk on the phone everyday. Suffice to say, it works.
Feminism came and fucked everything up...now guys cant tell if they are doing something that will be appreciated or something that will recieve an indignant response.
feminism sucks
So eventually I overcame the first impression and we became friends. In April 1993, we learned that we both planned to be at the March on Washington, and arranged to meet on the Mall. I am still not quite sure how we managed to find each other on the Mall in the middle of about three hundred thousand other people, but we did.
I never really believed in the phrase "love at first sight" before, but I do now. After that day, I went back to Massachusetts and she went back to Chicago. A little more than a year later, I drove across country and moved in with her. That was six years ago. We've been married now for four and have a son.
An important point is that this was not an "online relationship." We met, grew to know each other and became infatuated online, the first year of our relationship was spent a thousand miles apart, but it was fundamentally a real-life long distance relationship. The Internet precipitated bringing us together but was essentially the tool by which we remained in touch. Our first face-to-face meeting, and the ability to meet in person occasionally, was absolutely crucial to the development of our relationship. This would not have bloomed if we had carried it out exclusively online.
It seems to me that many a relationship is conceived (no pun intended!) in the workplace. Technical sorts looking for a like-minded partner would have better luck if they had a like-minded job.
:-)
Having said that though, guys who are trying to find a female partner would do well to realise that, unless there are an abundance of women in their circle, what few there are will likely have been hit on too many times by the other men, so go easy. The reverse obviously applies too.
One big problem with trying to find a long-distance (e.g., online) partner is that one's views and expectations of their `quarry' may be inflated to the extent that, by the time they finally meet in Real Life, they suddenly realise that neither suits the other. Remember that not being with someone face-to-face means that you won't get to notice their little quirks---not all of which are as pleasant as you might think!
Oh, two more things, especially for the guys. There are many who would much rather have a friend first---so approach with a good motive. And remember that at the other end of the line, just like your end, there really is a person---as much you'd like to think they're a new version of that `doctor' you saw in Emacs.
Good luck!
I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with a Fuck The World transition in your life, but it could be a transition that causes you to end up with a lot of regrets. All I ask is that you think about your decision some more. I know you've been hurt deeply, but don't let the heartbreak itself determine your path in life. Maybe something that would help is if you confronted her about how badly she messed you up--wouldn't necessarily have to be in person, maybe you could write her a note. Sooner or later you'll have to deal with this hurt. Tearing yourself totally away from life as you know it and walking the wanderer's trail of tears ultimately will not ease the pain. That's why I decided against the FFL. I knew the pain would be there with me during those 5 years, assuming I got in. Maybe the routine helps to bury the pain somewhat, but it would still be there. You'll always know the reason why you went to Australia in the first place.
I know this doesn't exactly fit your situation, but I think the emotions behind your decision do match up in some ways. Things won't be too much different in Australia, and they could possibly be worse. You may feel like you need to do this now, but you may feel much different when you get there.
I think you are a brave guy. It's hard to be open and vulnerable and take risks like that. You're also the kind of person that is what people really want--someone to be there in the trenches with them when life gets rough. It's one thing for people to talk about 'being there' and it's another to actually do it--you seem like a doer to me. You see, you really did show your best quality in your support of her in her rough time. Don't let how she hurt you take away your hope, your potential, and your path in life.
In the trenches with you in spirit, friend...
Don't get me wrong, online romance can kick ass, but I think the idea of an online romance as being a good idea is just pathetic and absurd. I have had a few online romances, many of which have moved on into meatspace (or have been carry overs from meatspace). It's a great way to pass the time, but don't quit your day job, ya know?
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Precisely *because* there are non of the physical clues of meeting people ftf. I mean, yes, it allows for my assessments of people to be based purely upon their attitudes and personality...but there are times when those things are not enough or are misleading. I'm 23 years old, and for awhile last summer, I found myself in a fairly close friendship on IRC with a person that I discovered was only 14. There wasn't anything untoward going on -- we were just friends -- but it still came as quite a shock. I'm still good friends with this person, and I probably wouldn't be if we'd met elsewhere than online, BUT...I'm sure that if this person's parents found out that a 23 year-old computer geek had ANY sort of relationship with their 14 year-old they would be far from pleased (with none of our protestations of innocence doing any good) -- see the article at Netslaves about online child-molestation...*shudder*. There's a *reason* that we react certain ways to certain people when we meet them ftf -- automatically labelling someone as a kid, for instance -- and many times they're perfectly good reasons. My friend might technically be better off hanging out with persons of the same age group, rather than in predominantly adult trafficked IRC channels. I dunno. Like I said, the connotations are scary.
It's a touchy subject, since there's a fine line between expressing interest and sexual harassment. Where I work, we have very strict sexual harassment policies. However, I know of two married couples in our group alone, and a pair of friends that may become a couple pretty soon. All of these are coworkers.
The main restriction our employer puts on us is that one of the spouses can not be the other's superior on a reporting chain. (eg. you can't marry your manager or your manager's manager.) Other than that, you're ok.
My suggestion: Start small -- "Hey, want to go to Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee?" -- and if things seem to click, build up a little. If the person you're interested in seems to back away or not be interested, back off somewhat, but don't alienate them (particularly if they're in your workgroup). Alienation is just as much sexual harassment as overattentiveness.
Welcome to the millenial workplace, where morale and loyalty are low, tension and stress are high, and legal pitfalls abound.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
But .. sometimes it just happens. .. this was in October 1997. Early January 1998, I got introduced to a web-based chatter. Small crowd, good atmosphere, I was hooked :)
... we fell in love. After a year of online relationship, we finally met in February this year (she lives in the USA, I in the Netherlands ... 3500 miles is a long, long swim) She stayed with me for a month ... one of the best months of my life
.. it's hard, but we manage.
... don't hide behind lies. Online relationships are even more based on blind trust than IRL. It's impossible to see if someone types the truth, so you have to trust him/her.
After breaking up with my first girlfriend (who I had met on MOO) I vowed never to fall in love with someone on Internet again (bloody distance can be killing)
Then, not even two weeks later, I met a girl there and we started talking. For two weeks, all we did each night was talk to eachother for 4-6 hours in a row. The inevitable happened
And Jan 15th, I'm flying there. It has been almost a year again since we've seen eachother
For me, the key to finding a special one (and friends in general) online is be yourself
The fun thing is, that because online chat is a little more anonymous, people tend to say things they wouldn't tell anyone but their best friends IRL. I know for sure that I know some of my online friends better than some of my IRL friends.
Just my experiences
--
Ignorance is no excuse
I agree with most of what I have read. But I am also leary of the online dependancy that a lot of geeks rush into.
Having said that, with my own personal expereince, it hasn't been the lack of being able to meet people. I am just afraid. Not of females, but of getting hurt. I think that many find it easier for an online romance because if things go sour, you can just block 'em. In real life, you see them in passing and at various events. Every time you see them, you are reminded of the failure.
Thus, the internet can shield you from some pain and embarasment.
On the flip side, though, I find my self more open on the net. Maybe it is a again part of the defense mechanism. Online != real life. Well... unless we let it. That is, I guess where all this discusion is heading.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
After having experiences both scenarios, I have to say that I most certainly prefer the real life outdoor get away from the computer briefly relasionship. After having been on irc for a number of years, I have known and met: 1. people who had met on irc and had gotten together and are/were still together. 2. people who dated every screwed girl online who claimed to be some sort of model. 3. people who had met online dated online for a short time, gotten together in real life and then called it off. 4. people who dated online and after a number of failures decided to try thier luck at real life dating. 5. people who have met online, dated online, got together in rl, got married. 6. people who have met online, dated online, got together in rl, got married, had kids, then broke up because one or both had cheated with someone online. There is no end. People who are shy find it easier to communicate in the kind of forum irc provides. Keep in mind that many of the women who date online do so for a reason.. because they are damaged goods and have things to hide that are too apparent in public. Psychosies abound the online dating arena. I have given up on dating online and irc altogether in the hopes that Ill be able to spot the psychosis before it affects my sleep and my wallet. LW Without going into too much detail, one of my horrow stories was an online relasionship i had with a woman who ended up being nearly as old as my mother.
Okay, I think it's about time someone expanded on the relationship/love theme and included the friendship issues as well. There are people who spend the better part of their lives on IRC, their friends, their SO's, everyone special and close to them is on IRC. To people like that, IRC is a way of life. They get up, say hi on IRC, go to work, perhaps IRC from work (if it's not firewalled), they come home, they IRC, they eat, they IRC, and they sleep. And then the cycle repeats.
:)) or action messges (*hugz*) but they are no substitute for the real thing.
I've seen this happen to a few friends of mine. Everyone they know is on IRC much like themselves. Sometimes, an online relationship can bring you closer to IRC, and spend more time on IRC, and when your SO isn't around, you talk to other people, get to know them etc. IRC sucks in that way, because you do NTO get that "in real life" contact, you don't have tone of voice, expressions of face, body language etc - vital things to any sort of friendship or relationship. You can use emotacons (those little smiley faces
I'll also mention that I've seen countless stories on the web about how IRC has changed peoples' lives, generally for the worst. My story really started out from a keypal site on the world wide web, when I first got my very own email address (wow! - and it was a REAL POP ACCOUNT, back when hotmail things didnt exist), and e-mailed a few people there. I e-mailed those people for a few months, but one girl by the name of Jess had the unfortunate experience of getting to know me better. She was in Singapore, I was in Australia. She came to board in a boarding school down here the following year, and well..once we met...things just fell apart. God only knows...and I dont have an explanation to this very day. No, she wasn't a geek either...just a very good friend.
Then I met someone else..someone I still love today on a small new IRC network called AUSTnet (irc.austnet.org) in a small channel called #antara. Her and I were good friends, and well..we would have been going out if it wasn't for a few mistakes I had made with regards to making up my mind with feelings and so on.
TO cut a long story short, IRC is no place for a relationship. The whole expression of feelings thing, in my opinion, is just not possible.
- zardoz@wonk.net
SWGeek, 25, 17 karma 18 int, leftish, HWP, ISO slashdot geek girl. Requirements: Seattle area, has a life, somewhat 'rubenesque' a+, reads /. past midnight on a Saturday [or Sunday morning with threshold of -1 :) ]
(I can't believe it, but this may actually be the first true personal-ad post here. "You have to guess my area code" doesn't quite count.)
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
Instead of meeting people online, i try to just get to know people online. For example, met my current boyfriend @ a club
Concerning meeting Geek Chix, online isn't a bad place to look. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of us here in the DC area, but the ones i've met have been:That's where i find myself anyway
I have a very rare photograph of Houdini locking his keys in his car.
It figures Kit, or Kish....whatever his gay ass calls himself, would post this crap. You ever see what that flamer looks like? He is one weird looking bastard.
I've seen what he looks like and I'd be quite happy to go out w him. He's quite nice looking. Unfortunately I seriously doubt he's gay. And if you think this topic is such a waste why are you bothering to read it? Much less post. Grow up. I'm quite pleased to see that someone asked this question.
People say that the internet is full of liars and that you can't tell what someone is like unless you meet them. I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Five (read it: FIVE) of my former girlfriends have been physically abused in former or subsequent relationships; two of them have had weapons pointed at their heads. These girls did not meet their partners on the internet. My flatmates (2 girls) have both given their phone numbers away in a pub and then been hassled by the guys. In what way can this be better than email harrasment?
My point is that meeting people on the internet has exactly the same issues as meeting people any other way. People can lie and cheat regardless of the means with which you meet them. The internet brings it's own dangers (like the poor bugger who's love letter was distributed by a scornful chick in the army) but also reduces some of them - you're not going to get a random punch in your face at a nightclub, like a friend of mine did a few weeks ago.
Being lonely is a condition brought about by not meeting people, and you have to mingle to meet. I really don't think it matters where you mingle, be it in a dingy bar, a rave party, or on the 'net. The people you meet online are as likely as those you meet offline to be good or bad; at least the 'net gives those of us who need to build up their confidence an opportunity to mix with others in environments that they can escape from with the flick of a switch.
Two words: Go international. American chicks are the worst in the world and every sophisticated international man knows this. Even a mail-order bride is better than some bitchy American feminazi...
Being from Holland and the fact that Dutch girls don't like to be online, especially 4 years ago, I only met US/Canada girls on the net... This how I end up with a cyber relationship with a a girl from the US, who I met on IRC, when I was like 19. For one and a half year, we had great fun, but if neither one of you is deciding to immigrate, it has no future, as did we had... So that's why I don't look for female contact anymore on the net..
(btw, I used the nick TeddyBear for a while, but I kept being herassed by other males, either thinking I was a female or, what I later found out though I was a 'bear' (a very hairy bearded big homophile person) so I switched nicks..
They're way cuter than human women:)
It's weird. I had a crush on her for a while, before ever talking to her. Then while I was talking to her we didn't talk about a whole lot, etc. Then, as school was ending, she asked me to sign her yearbook... and I put my email address in there too. Pretty much the nerdiest thing that average people would know how to do :)
Well, anyway, as I'd been to shy to ask her phone number, I had pretty much given up all hope of talking to her over the summer, and going out with her at all. However, on the first night of our vacation, she emailed me. Believe me, I was leaping about the room (literally). I got to know her over IMs (she has AOL 'cause of parents...), and emails, and I got her phone number, and well... now she's my best friend, and it looks like she's gonna be my girlfriend at some point in time. I love her :)
I'm sure you all care about this; but it's how I got the nicest girl in the world, for whatever reason. I'm not smooth or anything (I wrote my email in her yearbook, for chrissakes), but somehow, for some reason she likes me.
There needs to be more girls like that.
-- Your IP is showing
Some people enjoy eating. Some of us tho resent it as an annyoing physical necessity that takes up time we could use instead for more interesting pursuits. I dont know if that's the explaination for the majority of skinny geeks, I'm sure it's not for all of them, but it is for me.
OK here's my spiel:
:) (i'm here wearing a sweater in DC)
... is that guy someone you'd like to change with? If not, you need to find someone you can change with - or maybe no one for now, whatever.
Didn't you say you'd both graduate in 6 months? You two could get jobs in the same place then - but if you ask me you may want to avoid living in the same place for a while. Go to CA with this guy or something, the weather is paradise
A lot changes when you get out of school
I'm just saying chilling on the relationship for a few months is couldn't hurt - what's a few months when you two could end up spending years or your whole lives together? On the other hand a few months of not going out with someone that you weren't meant to be with anyway is nothing.
I don't know you and it's very likely that i could be completely wrong. If so, sorry, just trying to offer some encouragment.
I have a very rare photograph of Houdini locking his keys in his car.
This is coming from somebody who's loss-of-virginity tale ultimately (toward the end) involves a MUD.
I've myself met five women IRL whom I first met online (and this over three years). So far, all of those have been washouts (though the most recent has a ghost's chance of turning into something decent). This doesn't count other the relationship that was carried on in no small part between the mailboxes of Yours Truly and my significant-ther-at-the-time.
When I examine my experiences, and those of other guys I know who have started relationships online, I come away under the impression that these women were looking for something unexpected - and often, panache (quite often in the sack, as part of the "ravished by someone I barely knew" approach) has had a lot of synonymosity with unexpectedness. D'oh!
Caveat emptor, baby.
If you want to have non-computer fun, chances are that anything goes (as long as you keep "NON-COMPUTER FUN" at the forefront of your mind). If you want a lasting partner (friend, confidante, significant other, lover) and you hope to find her online, spend A LOT of time at a distance when it comes to full-on romance - make friends, first.
At least, that's my opinion. Thanks for letting me share it with you...
...When in doubt, think for yourself.
Some people aren't open to finding out whether anal stimulation is pleasurable. The most common reason is that it somehow makes them homosexual, and the only people who would really have this problem (eg. won't try it because it's somehow 'homosexual') are homophobes. I don't know what else to call them.
That's quite alot different than the idea that disliking anal stimulation somehow implies that you're a homophobe. It's the other way around: Homophobes dismiss the idea out-of-hand because it's 'too homosexual' and will never find out if they actually like it or dislike it, plain and simple.
Common interests are key.
"The electric light is pure information"
-- jimmycarter
I'm single, I refuse to get involved with anyone I happen to meet online, and I don't date because I don't have the time nor the patience to invest in something that deserves more than 'just a try'. I do go out as often as work permits it, with several ladyfriends, and we have a blast. One thing I know for certain though: trying to meet your dream-person online is one of the lamest things ever.
Grow up, shower, get a decent wardrobe (that means no t-shirts all the time, kids), get some wheels (not all girls dig being picked up on bikes or skates), and think in terms of dinner and a movie (this doesn't mean MacDonald's and Blockbuster), and not southpark reruns or cheesy-ass crap like Magic and other wanker games. It is so much nicer to spend quality time together, instead of 'quality online time'. You'd be surprised how well things go if you just interact with a *real* person instead of staring at a computer screen for hours on end, wasting your time with some guy or girl who may be the brightest person you ever met, yet happens to have the same social skills as the common lettuce head.
From my present (ongoing) experience, be friends first. We started out exchanging emails twice daily to begin with, then stepped up to online chat daily for about six months before exchanging phone numbers. And on days when I don't feel like writing a lot, I usually send the person a e-greeting card. There was no big surprise when we saw each other face to face for the first time after 7 months of online encounter. Also, honesty and courtesy can go a long way. Above all, take your time. Don't give up. Romance is out there!
"Want to make spoons?" - Butch, _Pulp_Fiction_
Believe with me, my saplings.
I have had both good and bad experiences with them. The first two relationships that started from online (chatrooms) both turned out sour.
However, with the third one (chatroom as well), I have found my perfect match and am quite happy.
I guess what I am saying is that online relationships are just about the same as offline ones. The only difference with the online ones is you don't know how much the person is lying till you meet them.
As I said, this last one has worked out perfectly, you can check out pictures Of me, the wife, and our kid (being blessed by CmdrTaco of all people) ;)
---The proceeding comments were not paid for by the following advertisers.
My primary experience with meeting women online
is feeling stupid for not taking them seriously
because they were just someone I'd met online
(and hence must have something wrong with them,
etc.). Quite often, when I finally got around
to meeting them, I regretted not having met
them sooner.
Though, for this to work, you need to spend
some time hanging out in places on the net
that roughly correspond to your physical
location, so you don't have to blow a plane
ticket to put a face on the words.
My first experiences on-line were with
Stanford-only bboards. Currently I spend a
fair amount of time on bay area related
mailing lists. Notably, there's a "ba.*"
usenet hierarchy, and some of them organize
gatherings on ocassion (e.g. ba.singles does
Bike Boinks). That's the kind of stuff that
I mean.
And it's often seemed to me that as the net
accumulates more users, global forums will get
too crowded to be useable, and one way to
manage the influx will be to split off into
geographically related groups (e.g. a ny.talk.politics newsgroup rather than just
talk.politics).
discussion group
A teacher's university. M:F ratio .7
A typical liberal arts university. M:F ratio 1
An engineering university. M:F ratio 1.7
It's simply amazing how much "I" changed when I moved between these environments.
Can anyone do the math?
Seriously folks -- not only is it a market -- it is what economists call an inflexible market. Small variations in the M:F ratio from 1:1 can have enormous effects on the "pH" of the mix. In the engineering school, it may have just been my imagination, but there seemed to be a lot higher rate of females who were either:
Part of some stud's de facto harem.
Lesbian/bi.
It was actually tragic to see what these environments did to people who didn't understand it was the environment -- not themselves nor the opposite sex who was to blame. I consider it a crime against humanity to create sociosexual torture chambers for people of either gender during their formative years. University authorities around the world are responsible for the mal-socialization of our most valuable talent.
Since I happened to have experienced myself in a pretty high status light prior to experiencing myself in a lower status light, I wasn't as vulnerable as many of my engineering school friends who dove in straight from high school. I did relatively well by just "turning off" in high M:F ratio environments and then "turning on" when in more natural settings (making sure I got into more natural settings from time to time).
Work environments have basically the same dynamic, except they are further complicated by what Margaret Mead called "violation of the workplace incest taboo". That's bad. Given the general Evolutionary Psychology of Polygyny it's worse. Attempting such violations within a typical high tech workplace where the M:F ratio and sociosexual imprinting reflects the engineering schools from which people are drawn is enough to turn a young man "out" as though he were in prison. Just say "no" to engineering environment mating.
Seastead this.
Here's the one and only true answer to the question: Nowhere. ;)
What other answer could you expect from people who leave their office (populated by male developers exclusively for now) only to go to sleep every couple of days?
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
It dawned on me after reading so many self aggrandizing comments that the more geeks try to claim they are different the more normal they become.
:P
The subject may have a bit of satire in it however it still rings true.
As far as geek women go, I've met a few and never dated any. I tend not to date a great deal because dating for me seems to be the art of choosing which female will cheat on me next.
However.. if any female were to email me back I certainly wouldn't mind..
Kevin
I generally don't believe in the whole on-line
thing: my typing self finds it easy to be deep and meaningful, but f2f the magic is what seems to
matter. Otherwise, both sides just sit bored in
a cafe and resolve not to try this again.
You disagree? Bring it on, baby... try me. =)
[
OK, while most of you will have condescending things to say about tech support, I have experience with it and just being nice and knowing everybody is a good way to get started in becoming less introvert. And btw, good tech support isn't solving techie problems, it is tying your hands behind your back and giving clear and unmistakable instructions, leading to a customer who has solved the problem with their own hands and is really satisfied. It was one of those customers who made advances at me, dated me and then forced me to learn smalltalk (pun intended) and party going. Today I'm soooooo smooooth ... and A Doctor (soon anyway).
All we seem to be hearing about is what doesn't work. Mostly things that go without saying.
Might as well call Psychic Friends for this kind of "advice".
I can certainly attest to that (not the marrying part)! However, I am not an HNG myself, though I do happen to inhabit the UF list. I wonder how long until they give me a title.. (probably something incorporating the word ``Loser'' if Signal 11 gets his wish)
It is a nice, relaxed atmosphere, however. ;)
~ Kish
Don't worry too much about the signals. I have made the same experiences as you until recently, I never had a serious relationship and I'm already 29.
I got those "signals", some pretty strong and unambiguous, from several women before, but none was really interested in a relationship with me.
I might tell my story, because although my girl-friend lives some 300 miles away we are very happy right now.
We met on the German language Christian channel #ixthys, and although there are often a lot of geeks she is not one of them, but spends a lot of time on-line and at the computer otherwise.
Even long before that I tended to visit people I met on the Internet (both male and female) quite often, and then, although I was really not interested in romance, when I suggested we met IRL some time, she agreed. We had really talked a lot on-line before, but rarely ever e-mailed, but started talking on the phone from time to time. I went to visit her, and we visited her home town, went to the movies, talked a lot, watched video films etc., but all the time it was "just friends".
It was only the third time I visited her that it started getting romantic, and only after I extended my visit by one day, and even missed a choir concert for that. Sitting very close together after watching a video film, we stroked through each other's hair, and it turned out we both liked it so much, that, one small step after another, we ended up kissing.
Sometimes it can work. The best thing was that we did not even have to say a word, and it was not at all embarrassing, it was just The Right Thing.
People say that one can either be lucky in gambling or in love. I know that it's wrong. The first time I visited her I won an SGI 320 Visual Workstation in a prize draw, which I thought was my single biggest stroke of luck ever, but on the next visit I won my girl and I know that's worth a lot more.
Bernd
Yeah. Working on week-end nights are deadly.
:|
No wonder why I don't have the timing to meet women.
I can really rely on a recent userfriendly.org comic strip with Miranda getting the graveyard night shift... It is as bad as it looks...
Prozac is encapsulated miracle
The best way to look at Internet Romances is to think of them as no different to going to the pub. It has the added benefit that you aren't going to be basing everything on what someone looks like so you're more likely to find that soul-mate, but the problem is that a lot of people online are different people than in real life in some way. Many people are the 'person they would like to be' rather than the person they are and generally it's not done to be spiteful but just because we all want to be better people, so there is room there for disappointment.
:) My first thoughts of her were that she was stuck up, she wouldn't talk to me - turns out she didn't understand that when it said 'You hear a voice whispering from a great distance....' that it was actually someone paging her, since her character was Deanna Troi from Star Trek she figured it was something to do with that and ignored it :)
I met my wife on the Internet, I was in Essex University in the UK and she was a Brigham Young in Utah. We met via a friend who found her on a mailing list for penpals, and introduced her to the world of online communication via MUD and MOO, which is where I met her since I co-ran the system with aforementioned friend
We were great friends for about 18 months before she came over here for a vacation and didn't go back again. We've been married now for coming up to 5 years in December.
It can work, it can just as easily go bad. Some people I know have gone to meet someone they are really fond of and found that all the other person (usually the guy of the pair) is after is someone with which to dance the matress mambo.
The important things as far as I can see it are to meet people through the Internet, sure, build up a friendship through the Internet, sure. DONT FORGET to meet these people in real life, become friends with them in real life and do it the old fashioned way from there because you can hide so much behind that monitor that you might shock someone else and/or they might shock you so don't get wound up in something you wish you hadn't 'if only you'd known'. It's like marrying someone before you've lived with them for a while, no matter how good friends you are it's not until you're in each others pockets 24/7 that you realise how much they irk you (or not, if you're lucky).
I'm not knocking Internet Romance - it's how I met my wife, as I say - but i'm saying that you should never rely on it, you still can't beat calling someone or taking them out to dinner etc, personal contact.
Just my $0.02 (actually more like $20.00 judging by the size of the scroll bar hehehe).
Matt (NeutronIC).
==== Dear Diary ==========
==== Dear Diary ==========
http://www.deardiary.net - Put your thoughts online, Visit my diary, http://neutronic.d
I think you might want to tell her what you're doing before exploiting her on Slashdot...
Hey, admin-types? Want to generate some action on this site? Want a few more people looking at all those nifty Web ads?
The above idea.. is fabulous! Can you /possibly/ think of a better way to attract more network life of the geek variety?
(I, for one, am all for it)
~ Kish
So out of desperation, I discovered a way to use computers to solve my problem. I started visiting computer labs that attracted the larger percentage of attractive women (like in the English Department). I'd sit down at a computer next to one of them, and then run some checks to see what her userid was, etc. Then I'd start up some random conversation, no pressure, no attempt to nail down a date... just have fun and joke around and then as before, I wouldn't "close the deal" and she'd just vanish. Except this time, I had her email id!
Then, I'd send her an email, reminding her about the conversation and saying that I wanted to meet again! I figured that this was WAY to geeky for most of these girls and that they would be creeped out, but I really didn't care because the campus population was so large, I knew I'd never see her again. But suprisingly enough, none of them were freaked out by it!!! And this was 8 years ago, in an era where most people who weren't computer majors didn't read their email very often if they even knew how. So sometimes, I didn't hear back from the girls for months and months and I would have completely forgotten about them. Then they'd send email accepting, and I'd have to work really hard just to remember their name! But it kept my life interesting wondering what bombshell was going to pop up in my mailbox on a given day.
When I got really desperate one time, I started randomly talk requesting girls who were logged into the same unix server I was using. One of the girls started a very aggressive conversation with me that on the surface seemed like she was interested in me, but I sensed alot of cynicism. We eventually met for coffee, and hit it off! Later she told me that at the same time she had been talk requesting GUYS in an attempt to get lonely guys to buy her dinner (she was a poor student). Then she would unceremoneously dump them and repeat (yes she was a very wicked thing). I threw a wrench into the works because she ended up liking me but I still laugh my ass off when I think of that.
It's always interesting to note a presence on Slashdot you have previously encountered elsewhere, such as the BBR. HA!
~ Kish
Vicki and I met on a Usenet newsgroup, rather than interactive chat. Maybe it's because we're older than most geeks, but communication where you actually put some thought into every sentence you write worked better for us. We started exchanging email, we met face to face about 2 months later. 6 months after that, I got a job in her city so we could start dating like real people. About two years after that we got married. I'm sure you horny young geeks think that's an incredibly long time to wait, but we'd both been married before and we both had kids, so we had to be sure this was right.
Anyway, check out our wedding web page
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
..and I know.. I work the graveyard shift, myself. 10 pm to 6 am, and I'm always too wired to sleep when I first get home, so guess when I sleep? Right before work. Guess when that is? The time the rest of humanity is awake! (at least in my time zone)
As a previous poster suggested, however, looking for dates at work might not be so bad, especially in this case, because at least you'll be on the same fscked phase. ;)
Speaking of which, I should force myself to sleep now..
~ Kish
They had a software that allowed people to see other people online on the same web-site & it automatically gave a visual alert that someone probably of similar interst is online. Gave me an excuse to talk to the gal. Initially it went well as I had good quality contacts with some people but recently their audience seem to have dropped.
Still hopping to meet someone online :)
KuaiKuai
I divied this long post into various sections with bolded text.. Take advantage of this fact if you don't want to read my boring history!
..you know, just because I'm bored and such. I myself haven't had much luck with meeting women online. And at least when you meet them in person they live close, so it is fun while it lasts (that is, before you get screwed over.. this is assuming it doesn't last, of course).
The Abbreviated History:
However, the number of potential SOs I've met online pale considerably to those I've met IRL. I myself tend to get involved one of three ways: 1) someone takes an interest in me and adamantly pursues me (sometimes I'm not too crazy about the person, but most women who are -- I hate to say ``odd enough'', lest I curtail further efforts.. I don't think them odd, I just think the situation odd, because it's.. not a usual occurance -- to pursue me, but usually I'm receptive) 2) I meet them through mutual friends and get to know them fairly well before we just sort of become an item 3) I meet them online in some fashion or another. I've never been like the women described in example 1.. I just don't wander up and randomly hit on someone I think is cute at school, work, wherever (this is changing soon, I think). Well, maybe I have, but more in the fashion as described in example 2. I make friends with them, and things naturally progress..
A number of women I've met online were just total washouts. I've had a few that the first time I talked to them on the phone, I knew that it was a lost cause (due to lack of interest on my part). I've only met two such individuals IRL. One was in Canada. This actually turned out fairly well for a while. Personality conflicts eventually killed this one, and we are not on speaking terms anymore (I wager a psychosis of some kind on her end, but we won't get into that today). With the other, it was more of a casual flirtatious thing (as in example 1, except I was somewhat ``desperate'' at the time, and make any excuse to travel, even if only to meet friends, not potential SOs). This flared (very, very dimly) for only a short time before mutual disinterest in the notion set in. I still visited. Was an alright visit (I'm oversimplifying, for brevity's sake, on most of all of the above). However, again, not on speaking terms at this point (longer story which ties into the previous paragraph in obscure and frightening ways).
Now we come to the second female I've met online that seemed worth my time in a very real and productive way (which includes this paragraph, and the paragraph before the one previous.. that is, the previous paragraph doesn't count in this tally). However, this seems to have panned out badly. (that is, current status unknown, though outlook appears dim) Again, this is due to personality conflict.
General Thoughts:
All in all, even the best prospect can turn sour. My most recent interest seems to have panned out despite being virtually perfect with regards to interests, personality, intelligence, even physical attractiveness (though this is emphatically not a major factor).. due to little things. Some personality quirks simply do not appeal to others. For me, one is presumptuous. I choose my words carefully, and when people divine implied meanings that simply aren't there and act upon them without consulting me in a reasonable fashion.. I'm going to tell them to fuck off.
To ``Summarize'' My Thoughts:
My closing thoughts: It doesn't matter where you meet your SO. Always keep your options and eyes open, lest you miss out on an oppurtunity. Actively hunting for a date just for the sake of dating isn't likely to net you a real find (unless you're simply not interested in the long term). Being honest and direct is a Good Thing. Most females I've met who had romantic potential lied to me or decieved me in some way. They were dispensed with with exceptional expedience.
Honesty and trust forms the foundation for all healthy, stable, worthwhile relationships. If you have to lie to someone for them to be with you, if you're not worth trusting.. there is nothing there but a lie if you're together. It's meaningless. True love is the only real fulfilment, and it can not be won through deception.
You should also never lower your standards. Some compromise is good, because you'll never meet ``the perfect man/woman'', though you may meet the perfect one for you. If your personalities clash, don't force it. If you were meant to be together, some conflict will arise, as with all relationships, but it shouldn't be too much of a headache, or else you might want to wonder why you're together if you argue more than anything else. If you lower your standards, however, you're going to end up with someone you don't really want, simply because you're lonely. Obviously, this is not going to work out. Don't waste your time.
~ Kish
Linux-biased geek personal site, from Iambe of User Friendly. It worked for me.
Having been around the "online world" for a number of years, meeting someone online seems to me to be pretty much like meeting anyone anywhere else in the world.
My best friends met each other through an online BBS about seven years ago. They helped each other through some extremely rough times before marrying in 1997. Everyone I know is extremely jealous of them because after seven years together (four of them full-time) their "spark" is still there.
Another friend I have met her husband (Married recently) on a dating service. They are an odd-couple, but they are happy together.
Another friend met her boyfriend on the same BBS my best friends met on. She was engaged for a while, then broke things off. Now they're back together.
Myself, I dated one girl I met online. Things didn't work out, but it was a hell of a ride.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
..provided they can bring themselves to use it.
I think that one of the great benefits of new methods of meeting members of the opposite sex is that it overcomes some of the big hurdles for people who do not socialise well and understand all the rules.
i.e. if someone has put an advert, whether it be on the net, phone lines or even good old fashioned newspaper, it makes asking someone out for a date a whole lot easier since you know they are looking for a partner.
Also online, you can hopefully get your thoughts together before typing, and since you have time to compose replies even the most tongue tied can think of witty replies and conversation.
On another subject even if geeks of the opposite sex are hidden behind their computer screens, hopefully they've got an IRC channel open for communication to pass away the time whilst waiting for their latest Linux kernel compilation to complete.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
eom
I read this off of the link to the October 24th article on Slashdot relating to Lovelorn Geeks:
"A woman just like you wouldn't be there for you when you wanted a hug. She'd be obsessively coding or posting on Slashdot herself, and would brush you off when you needed her. What you really want is a woman who will be there for you when you get tired of staring at your monitor and need some loving, but will leave you alone and not demand your attention when you're busy. You don't want a Geek Girl. You want a woman who is willing and able to meet a geek's needs, which is not the same thing at all."
That paragraph basically states you wouldn't like yourself if you dated yourself, because you would be giving yourself the cold shoulder. Maybe if these type of geeks took a long look at themselves, they might realize what the real problem is here. If you can't date yourself because you are a cold fish how can you expect others to date you??
I'm a geek. I'll admit it. I'm dating a geek too. We play console/computer games together, we hang out in the same chat channels online with others, and we schedule our computer time so that we are both online or on the computer at the same time (usually), therefore able to spend the time away from the computer together. By both being a bit on the geek side, we generally understand why one of us might feel compelled to sit on their computer till 4am playing a game.
In other words, having the same interests can most definetely be a good thing. For those who can't stand to date someone like themselves, well... if you don't like yourself maybe you should think about changing.
Just my two cents.
i met me geek girl on match.com. we're getting married on saturday. =8] it can and does happen, but ymmv. sig
Here I am, 25 years old, and I've never had a long-term relationship. I have lots of girls who are friends (funny how every girl I want to date turns out to be a friend), and seriously thought something was wrong with me.
I read your post, and I swear I could've written that whole thing myself! Yes, I've even had the psycho's-- the last girl I had any involvement with was heavy into the "goth" thing, had tattoos, pierced tongue, was severely bipolar, and (surprise surprise) just wound up using me.
Now reading the other replies, it's very curious how many people (geeks) fall along similar lines. In a way it's good to know I'm the only one in this boat.
What's more aggravating is that so many of my female friends tell me what a great guy I am. Initially, even some women were just attracted to me based on looks (although I hardly consider myself to be some megastud) and then decided they just wanted to be friends after getting to know me better.
I don't know where I go wrong, and I'm pretty sure that I try to over-analyze/read too deeply into the actions and words coming from MOS (Members of the Opposite Sex). Maybe women pick up on that more easily than I think?
I keep misinterpreting signals, missing the "right" signals, and I sure as hell could use a FAQ as well.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I don't understand why geek guys always seek geek women, why do we make that a requirement? Is it because we want to 'talk geekspeak' with someone that can do the same? To me that's what LUGs and Slashdot are for. Maybe I'm not a true geek, but I DO NOT want a woman that is computer savvy, I want a woman with a life, and has girly stuff to talk about like who did who at her workplace. Two people of the same career, no matter what it is in the same house always creates problems if there is any differnece in opinion on something, or even if there isn't. I always got tired of a former GF and me always bitchin' about the same stupid stuff, from different offices. If you already understand where the other person's coming from, then there's really nothing to talk about, and communication is the bond that holds two people together. I don't know about the rest of you, but I love it when a woman is nothing like me, it is so fascinating to see a woman do something I have no idea about. Food for thought I guess, but don't make the mistake of limiting yourself to a particular career to choose your mate.
Computing has been pretty good for my real life. My first two serious romantic relationships started on M-Net, as did a long-standing friendship which was the critical contact allowing me eventually to leave a dead-end job in Michigan for what turned out to be a fairly rewarding career in Massachusetts. After that move, I met the woman who is now my wife, via alt.personals, and we exchanged email for several months before we met IRL. During a hiatus from that relationship before we got married (don't ask) I had another brief relationship, started this time on LambdaMOO.
Those are my credentials as a veteran of on-line romance. Now, the point I want to make is that the net is just a medium. To me, these relationships I've had aren't "net relationships" any more than using a phone to communicate makes them "phone relationships". They're relationships with people and the medium doesn't really matter.
There are many people who seem to develop an online persona that's different from their RL one. I'm not just talking about the sort of contextualization that causes us to interact differently with our children in the back yard and our boss at a cocktail party; I'm talking about something that's almost clinically recognizable as multiple personalities. These people often fear "crossover" between their real and virtual lives, and resist bringing the two together, because of what people may discover about their own "other self". Does this sound like a formula for long-term success and stability, romantic or otherwise? Obviously not. Most people who are online long enough eventually outgrow this phase and learn that the proper emphasis in "being yourself online" is on "being yourself" rather than "yourself online". People who maintain the separation too much or too long need to figure out what's so wrong with their real lives that they rely on their virtual lives as a refuge. Only then, IMO, can they expect to get anything substantial out of their interactions online.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
So this is where all the lamers from Segfault have gone after comments and write-ins were removed...
Have at it moderators!
I've been online for more than half my life, and well over half my relationships have been with women I've known from online. Sometimes it's stuff like IRC or MU*'s, sometimes it's Usenet, sometimes it's the web. The most important thing, though, regardless of how you meet someone online, is to be yourself.
If you're a geek in real life, be a geek online. While some women might be impressed with those Lord Byron quotes you snagged off the web, it's more likely that you'll have better luck finding a compatible woman if you remind her that Shakespeare sounds better in the original Klingon -- that is, if you're into Star Trek. Finding ways to describe yourself and the things you like and find interesting without saying "I" is challenging, but often helps begin the process of communication. Talk to her. Listen to her. Ask questions if you don't understand. Ask questions if you _do_ understand. Communicate about interesting things as well as trivia. The more you learn about her, the more likely it is that you'll realize whether she's good for you -- and vice versa, of course.
The added bonus of this approach is that you've quite possibly made a friend, regardless of where the romance leads. And for most geeks (like me), those friends are valuable, and few and far between.
The MUCKs, MOOs, etc are a good place. I met my girlfriend on a MUCK about two and a half years ago; she's finishing college before moving to be with me, and in the mean time we're flying to see each other, going on vacations together, etc.
The nice thing here is that it's not just a chatting environment. There's a lot of room to be inventive; your programming skills can be used to actually add interesting, new concepts to the environment. It's also easy to show off writing skills in adding new places to the environment. (Ever seen an OSS world?) My girlfriend had created an unusual Eastern palace and was programming an immersive Clue game within.
The most interesting aspects of your personality really shine through in a place like this. Even if you're not creating things, in the spaces everyone else has created, there's a lot more room to just break loose and play.
Generally the furry MUCK crowd (there are quite a few - telnet muck.org:6300, svansmoj.ctrl-c.liu.se:23 or furry.org:8888 for smallest to largest) is a pretty bizarre/fun set. Most here have characters formed after some animal which they think represent their personalities. (Kind of like walking cartoon characters, but they'd kill you for saying that.) Having already stepped out of the mainstream enough to accept the notion of these strange characters, most are pretty open to, and nonjudgemental about alternate lifestyles too.
Here's what I used to say to myself:
Your problem is that you don't have a life of your own.
You wait for others to define who you are.
You stand still, world/ppl move around you.
You make ppl comfortable by behaving the way they think you are (they are at ease when they figured you out - thinking you know who you are - and you know that the easiest way to make them to like you is if you adhere to their stereotype of you)
You know what's bad and what's wrong, what you like and what you don't, yet...no one cares!
Women. It's just the urge you have inside of you. You know they can be gentle, understanding, forgiving, caring but also destructful beings. Yet, you want to share yourself with them. But, first, you need to make her like you. So you do behave the way she likes, say what she likes. She likes that. But that's where involvement gets complicated: you 'make' her like you, by not being yourself. She likes what you've created but not You. Darn! You feel you need to brake out of the circle - get your r e a l needs fulfilled, fulfill their needs, compromise, laugh, cry, walk the middle path of life. Ah, yes, reveal You, real, nice, self. Than the light darkens, you realize, you are not friendly, truthful and nice - on the contrary, anger, at the whole world for not understanding you, and your needs, shakes you. You get your eyes half-closed, fists full of tension, neck stiff and rigid, your body is ready to explode. "It is your fault - you're deceiving ppl, you deceive yourself" , you think to yourself. And, than, you look straight in her eyes...and smile. She has got such a beautifull eyes!
Too bad...It's much more comfortable being numb.
"Isn't he happy, nice, perhaps little to himself gentleman?", women think as they come and go...
And, BTW, don't drink and drive.
John
Can't say I am surprised.
Sometimes I have the impression most people don't have a private life on their own as they have to dig so much in others people life.
Looking at the company in the Netherlands I am working right now and the relative open talks that is going on here (and I would say in europe in general), I must say I am not surprised that in the US it happens through Backdoors.
Sad to see another person getting milled through because somebody had to be important....
Michael
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I hate to say it, but I've read some of the material associated with that, and it nearly makes me physically ill. I don't care whether it works or not, but being that cold and manipulative is one of the most revolting concepts I've ever heard of. Sure, a lot of the material is legitimate, but everything towards the NLP side of things is really just sick and twisted, and even some of the legitimate things are taken one step too far or viewed from an exploitative angle. The whole attitude behind that is just wrong, I'm sorry. I thought so when I didn't have a girlfriend (and never had), and, now that I do (through completely unrelated means), I still think so. I'd have severe difficulty respecting anyone who had ever tried any of the more cold, ruthless, and manipulative tactics in there. If there's any justification for this that I'm missing, or any reason that it's not unethical / immoral (or both, I can't keep them straight), please let me know, but I don't think there is any.
A few years ago I spent a lot of time on irc and made a bunch of good friends. So on my way back home from college one summer I figured that it would be cool to make a side trip and say hello. She and I talked about it for a while and it ended up happening.
OH BOY!
Once I got there, it turned into a total nightmare. Her husband totally freaked out and spent most of the weekend driving me around, trying to figure out how to keep my friend from leaving him. The weekend ended with him putting his hand through a glass table-top during an argument.
Watch out for yourself.
Needless to say, it took finding the right woman online. (Duh. Spent the last 5 years online.) She decided to move down here while we dated and got married eventually. It is possible.
**There are varying shades of darkness, I am but one of the many.**
Those personality types are interresting, but you should mention that there is a WAY more complicated test behind it (around 1000 Questions?) To determine what kind of personality you are.
A Quick test is on the Authors Website at:
http://www.keirsey.com/
Michael
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
>>Life is not about coding
;)
Wrong, totally wrong!
Life is ALL about coding, combining two codes to spawn a child process (or more). So don't say that
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Why do geeks always seem to need another geek in their lives? I'm a geek, but I met my wife in college. She is not a geek. I love her more than anybody else in the world, and can't imagine what it would be like to be without her.
I've been into computers long before we met in 1993. She isn't into them at all. Actually, she can't even stand using them! But I really don't care. We still have a lot of stuff we can talk about, and our relationship is rock solid. Anyway, if you can't find your mate online, don't give up on finding her offline! He/She may not be a geek, but does it really matter? You should love her for who she is and what she means to you. Don't love her because she's into the latest programming language or operating system!
--
Brandan Kraft
If you unlock her door for her, you're sending the message that you're looking for a chivalrous-model relationship, rather than an equitable, friends relationship. In not opening the door for you, the woman is simply going along with what you seem to indicate that you want.
I can hardly fault her for that.
Me, I act like I expect her to open her own damn door, because that's the time of woman I hope to find in the long run.
You need to communicate clearly and sincerly in all of your actions if you want someone else to do the same for you.
-- Only unbalanced people can tip the scales.
A different storey.
I was married to a wonderful woman. But I had no close male friends in the conservative circles I was in (church, family, etc). And I didn't hang out with the geeks at the IS shop I worked at. I was a pseudo-geek.
I met a guy on an invitation only religious feminist EMAIL list. Early to mid 1990s. We hit it off well, and it was a joy to find a like minded male friend. I live in Western Canada, he lived in the West Virginian mountains. Both of us married and with wives and kids.
An opportunity came up to work on an NSF project at his university - and we decided to hook up and I flew down. Cool work with electron microscopes. I loved the area and his family so much that I had my family come down.
They loved it too. Kids were instant friends. I went back to Canada to arrange things and wait for the NSF level 2 funding and my wife and kids were to come back. The future looked hot.
I got a call. It stung like a knife. We're divorced. They hate each others guts now.
I geeked out the next couple of years. During this time I tried numerous online stuff and did lots of email and irc - not great success. And few women in the geek places I worked.
So I started to do things I have wanted to do, but never gave myself time. I picked up the pennywhistle, a friend taught me the bodhran (celtic drum) and we jammed in the rocky mountain hostels, I took up some papermaking and bookbinding courses and have started to meet women in all these settings and I have a life that is turning sweet once again.
[moralizing mode on]
I have learned that if you have problems, a computer won't solve them. Deal with the problems and get a life and then things will work.
[moralizing mode off]
I feel 100% ready for online romance, if I went that route. Back a year ago I would have ended up with a "mom" had I met her online and not an equal.
I should send this to Cosmopolitan magazine.
Best wishes,
-rob
One day this girl just happens to jump on one of the channels I always idled on. It had the name of the geographic area we're both from in the topic, so she decided to check it out. Some guy followed her on the channel and was trying to talk to her. I told them both to go away, since this was a technical channel (my channel - I was about to kick/ban both of them). Well, the guy went away, but the girl introduced herself and told me she was from a town about 2 hours away. At that point I started being a bit more polite, and I answered some of her questions. I found her quite easy to talk to, so I kept talking to her then, and continued to talk to her nearly every day for the next couple of weeks.
At some point I decided that I'd like to meet this girl, so we met and went out on a date. (This is my only piece of advice... If you get into one of these IRC relationships, don't let it get very serious without actually meeting the person face-to-face.) Anyway, at that point we were utterly inseparable. A few months later, I moved to be closer to her. One year after we met in person, we were engaged. A few months later we got married. Now we've been married for about 2.5 years.
UserFriendly, of course, is already doing this, although coverage is a bit thin, at least in my area.
I'm starting a new personals site that seems to have attracted some interesting people (albiet mostly in the UK). My main interest was in making a more creatively-oriented, entertaining personals site. The profile system is very individualistic; it makes the answers fun to read.
Visit it at http://207.151.18.18/ - and note that it's completely free to use - no strings, no catch, you can reply to anyone you want as soon as you set up an account.
My for-pay competition is at http://www.match.com (probably the best one), http://www.americansingles.com/ and http://www.adultfriendfinder.com . Incidentally, I think the latter is a scam for the most part.
http://www.relationships.com appears to be free, and it has some interesting profile ideas. However, like the other services, it strikes a "too corporate" note in my mind.
I hope you'll try mine (and the others, if it pleases you) and let me know what you think. Bear in mind that it's about a week old, so there won't be too many geographically desirable matches just yet. Give it a little time and you might be surprised.
D
----
I wish I had been here when this was posted so I didn't get lost in the shuffle. But I met my wife on IRC in 1995, and we talked a lot off and on until summer of 1996 when we started dating. She lived in Raleigh, NC, and I lived in Corvallis, Oregon. We got married in October of 1996 and have been very happy ever since.
:)
The key to any successful relationship is communication. After that, luck.
Finding someone online is just like using any other means of finding someone.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I'd like to think the "geek" has evolved. I personally, work very hard as an Administrator, and have been a rabid fan of *nix for most of my computer using years. Beyond that however, I also run my own Indie. Record Label, and am involved in two different local bands, both of which are starting to get some serious attention. I rarely discuss my job when I'm out, and it usually is a while before the women I meet really know what I do. Where as I don't have a large failure rate with women, I do find that my job's demands put me at odds with many, especially with girlfriends who can't begin to (or just won't try to) understand what it is I may go through at any given day. I can't begin to tell you how many arguments I've faced because I get "called in" in the middle of something, or have to cancel plans. To surmise, I'm still a little leary about the whole on-line dating thing, but I also feel like that may be the only option left for some of us. I mean, it would be nice to just tell a girlfriend that a router has been on the fritz, or one of your servers keeps getting loaded down for no reason, and have her understand what your facing and know that your not there, not because you don't care about her, but instead because you have some serious work, with serious implications, that needs to be done. So I guess I don't care, as long as I meet a woman who can understand both sides of my life, I don't care where I meet her. I give alot of credit to the girlfriends I've had who have supported my work and hobbies, some of them were the most selfless individuals I've ever met, and I love them all dearly for the little things they did to try to make my life easier through rough times. I know it's hard on them too.
Although i met my present girlfriend in Real Life (and had known her for quite some time prior to "going official") , quite a bit of our talking is done online. Talking online, IMHO, is great because it doesn't have the inherent difficulties of phone or the lack of alone time (we are both teenagers, so parents factor into this...)
My only experiences with online romances have been stupid 2 day experiences that just fizzled after i realized what i was really doing.
Thats all i got to say... Dan
Dan Noe http://resonator.physics.sunysb.edu/dan/
After much trial and error, I found more compatible and more rewarding relationships with those who are not of the geek mindset. Why? This encouraged me to spend more time off-line with my SO and enjoy more of what life has to offer beyond a monitor.
:)
It also let me more thoroughly escape the technical "job" aspect of my life. I'm the type that will work on a "job" task even while at home if it captured enough of my attention. Leaving work behind at my "job" and living a non-tech life afterhours has helped me get my life back into focus and has provided me with more enriching romantic opportunities - which are nice.
Speak truth to power.
It can work and it has for me.
Back in '93 I met someone on Usenet. Neither of us were looking for a relationship, but after a few emails we began corresponding regularly. She was in the U.K. and I was in New Zealand - it isn't possible to have a longer distance relationship unless one of you is Martian.
Anyway within a year she was living with me in NZ, and we're still together today.
Meeting someone for the 1st time when you've only known them via email before is *weird!*
Having a GF who understands 68k assembler and likes Linux is mega-cool.
This is just my experience :-
On-line dating agencies, matchmakers etc
Lots of Russian / East European / Thai / Phillipina women looking for a meal ticket, a few nice intelligent women, a few reporters / writers / psyche students doing research (they are fun to toy with before throwing away) Most lie about themselves, and its not hard to spot, personally first lie I spot I'm off.
Chat rooms, instant messaging services
Some very nice, intelligent women around, but you need to sift carefully, many guys pretending to be female, hone your BS detectors!
One thing I have noticed recuring is that some women online have been harrassesd by idiots, and so when they come across me they will talk to me as two different people to see if I am really just a nice normal guy, I would never consider dating any woman that finds it so easy to lie to me, so girls, if you meet a nice man online, dont try it, you might just loose the man of your dreams.
Oh and I have met a wonderful woman online, not really a geek girl, but highly intelligent, charming, beautiful, articulate, and honest, they are out there, hope you all find your perfect matches.
I live comfortably and happily with a fellow geek of the opposite gender whom I met on Usenet. We've been living together two years now - she's reading news on the machine next to mine as I type.
There's a lot to be said for living with another geek - she keeps the same sort of hours as I do, has the same tolearnce for mess as I do, and wants to go out and socialise as often as I do. Furthermore, she can do tricks with SQL that leave me gasping in awe, so my code has improved in places...
Oh, and she's seriously cute as well.
Yes: live in Techno Talking Babe very much recommended.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
He's right. Online socialization can be good / fun / whatever, but RL beats it hands down. Not that I ever thought I had much of a chance IRL until this year. Every point I try to make is probably much better known to almost everyone older than myself (17, if you happen to be curious), but just feel like writing this, so in the name of self-gratification, here goes.
(I was going to try and put this to the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere, but I'd never get it done that way. Maybe if I get a massive email response.... [smiley would go here, but I'm against them in principle. don't ask for reasons because I don't have any.] And WARNING: there's much personal blathering to follow. This means a _lot_. And it takes me a little while to get to the relationship part.)
My first three and one-half years of HS just flat-out sucked socially. What I realize now is that there was quite a lot I could have done to change that. I had next to zero self-confidence and basically threw away every social opportunity I had because of that. I'll try not to go into detail here, but let's just say that, junior year, I skipped lunch some days just because I didn't have the confidence to either find people to eat with or to admit defeat by eating on my own. I just expected (for no good reason) everyone to disapprove of me or to not like me, and that, combined with my natural difficulties w/ small talk (that hasn't changed), basically killed my social life. I'm pretty sure people tried to be nice to me and include me during this period of time, but I was too insecure to believe it. The idea that I could have a girlfriend within about a decade was pretty much beyond belief.
I was pretty heavily into IRC during parts of this period, as it gave me a surrogate social life, and it wasn't bad, but it just wasn't too satisfying.
So, why all this crap about my lack of confidence? I have, at least partially, changed. Part is due to luck, part is due to some efforts I made myself.
Immediately prior to my senior year, I made one resolution: I would become more social. I wasn't sure how to do it, I wasn't sure what I could change, but I knew I had to do it to be happy. One thing I started doing was just repeating to myself, "I am a worthwhile person. I can be fun to be with. I am interesting," and catching myself whenever I found myself slipping back into my old ways and repeating the opposite to myself.
I think what they say about repeating something to yourself enough times and it coming true holds, because I started to believe this. I didn't change overnight, though.... It took months for me to begin to believe this enough to make a difference. I also know that one other thing I did was just to make the extra effort, any time I felt near the line between actively accepting (hard) and passively declining (easy) a social opportunity, to avoid the path of least resistance and accept. Especially at the beginning, I usually didn't make enough effort, but I got much better.
Now: everything people say about getting involved in activities is completely true. The sports I did were crucial (and it helped that both had co-ed practices and/or competitions). I didn't do either for social purposes (not that that isn't legit), but just for their own sake. I'm lucky that my parents got me into swimming early, because I ended up swimming all four years in high school (one saving grace), and lucky that my school had a huge rowing program (my last three years).
I became one of the captains of our swim team (of four, two men's, two women's.... captain inflation, I know, but the team was fairly big). Just the fact that I was on the team helped me make friends, especially with the other mens' captain (who I had been decent friends with through all our previous years on the team), who was pretty much my opposite in every way. Because of this, I got invited to a few parties (didn't like them much, 'cause I wasn't drinking, but it helped break peoples' preexisting images of me), and hung out with him and some of his friends a lot -- basically a geeky bunch (another way that I'm lucky: I had a basically geeky HS). Got to be friends with a number of them.
But back to captaincy and what this has to do with anything. My responsibilities as captain included keeping team spirit up. In fulfilling this, I'd ask anyone who I knew or anyone who looked like they weren't too happy with swimming how they had done in their last race, and try to give them whatever advice / encouragement I could. Since the male to female ratio on the team was about 1 to 3, this naturally meant I was talking with girls all the time. On the other hand, I was completely oblivious to this fact at that point, and never even considered pursuing a better friendship with those girls that I found attractive (this low self-confidence thing is a bitch). If I ever did, it got the "don't be ridiculous" mental squelch. (Somewhat akin to the "you've been spending a lot of time around X lately, therefore X probably wants you to go away" mental warning. Therefore leading to the avoidance of potential friends.) However, I was seeking out anyone who I had talked to at swim meets and practices and talking with them in the halls (usually about swimming), and many of them were seeking me out as well. There was one girl who I ended up talking to much more than the others, through her volition or mine or pure coincidence, but I never gave it a second thought. (Even though I did find her attractive.)
Cut to crew season. Lucky for me: large crew / swimming overlap, a 1 to 4 male to female ratio, driving a carpool home, and three weekend-long regattas. Carpool home helped w/ small talk skills, and got them to the somewhat usable point. And the long regattas gave me the opportunity to talk with plenty of people for extended periods of time.
Now I explain Erno Rubik.
Most of the way during the crew season, my math class had started a short section on group theory, which, of course, implies Rubik's cubes, and when you have one, how can you help learning to solve it? I got myself a number of bare-bones guides to doing this on the Internet, and started screwing around with the thing in my spare time.
HINT: Rubik's cubes make great conversation pieces. Hallways, lunch, airplanes, anywhere. People _will_ come up and ask you about it, especially if you can solve it (or at least get close).
Last regatta of the season. Second day, I've spent an hour waiting for my race lying on the grass beneath my team's tent, playing with the cube, trying to get the third layer solved. The girl who I had talked with all the time during swim season wandered up to me and started asking me about it. This developed into a longer conversation, and we ended up talking almost the entire day whenever both of us were free. I never gave this a second thought. (I'd trained myself to avoid that kind of 'nonsense.')
I solve the Rubik's cube unaided for the first time on the bus home.
And, finally (you think), the grand stroke of luck (or something), or proof that being able to solve a Rubik's cube makes you irresistible to members of the opposite sex:
I get home, and, a few hours later, the phone rings. "Did she lose something?" "Does she want to know when we have to derig the boats?" "Wants to know about the Ham & Egger?" Um, no. "Hi, Matt, I really enjoyed talking with you today, and I wanted to know whether you wanted to go see a movie or something next weekend." Pause. "Um, ok." I ended up suggesting a hike instead, and it went extremely well.
Of course, I still didn't believe that she wanted to be anything more than friends until our second date. Old habits die hard.
But now this relationship has turned long-distance..... She's still in HS, and I'm in Beijing. But we're still together, and I have no regrets.
And, no, I wouldn't have believed this myself a year ago.
If you read this all, you have an amazing tolerance for verbosity. But thank you.
The relevance would be that I've been in relationships with one or two of them in the past, and it's massively stressful trying to help someone deal with it. Anyone else been in the same boat?
Around 3 years ago, I started dating a girl I met on IRC. I lived in California, she lived in Missouri.
We spent thousands of dollars over the first 6 months in phone bills. I was living with my parents, so it's not like I needed my money for anything. When we reached that 6 months, she flew out to spend the summer with me. We had a wonderful time, and I flew out to Missouri at the end of the summer to meet her family and return her home.
6 months later, she moved out to California to live with me and my dad. It was kinda rough for a while, my dad and I were both really used to being bachelors. 6 months after that, a year and a half into the relationship, we moved out and got our own place. It was great, and we were "on our own" for a year. But without a stable roommate, and the high prices of Silicon Valley living, we decided to move out to Missouri to see her family and find a cheaper place to live. Me being a computer tech, I knew I could find decent work anywhere.
We're currently living with her parents in Missouri, me making as much as I was in Silicon Valley, her finishing school, paying off debts and getting ready to start our lives together.
All because of an IRC channel. And yeah, we're getting married next fall. =)
I'm a computer geek. I geek all day long on as many systems as possible. I currently have 4 at my desk at work, and the first thing I did to the house when we moved in was string CAT 5 everywhere and purchase a few NICs for the machines without them.
She's not a computer geek. She uses PhotoShop and Illustrator and some of the other graphics programs to make some kewlie artwork. She chats on IRC and ICQ. But she's not a geek. She has a life.
Our differences have caused an occassional argument. We've both talked about things, and made some decisions. We're both very happy now, I feel my life is going somewhere, and I have someone to share it with. Couldn't be happier right now.. =)
(Well, unless someone wants to send me a VARserver or something.)
Don
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
We'd pull things like tag teaming on women. One of us would start getting interested in some chick we were talking too, find out what lab they were in, then send the other to go find out what they looked like. It was completely ridiculous.
Several failed, short term, lackluster romances later my friend hooked up (online only) with a girl at Northwest Missouri State... (BTW they actually had ISCA counciling at the time) and she had a friend. So for about a month we'd spend approximately 8 hrs a day chatting.
Someone had the bright idea that we should meet one weekend. So we planned it for about a week. It was going to take them something like 10 hrs. to get to Iowa City because they had to stop somewhere else on their way that fateful Friday night. Butterflies were in the air.
So after I got off work monitoring the Computer Lab, I went over to my friends to goof off until they got there playing Command & Conquer or some such nonsense. About 10 p.m. there was a disturbance in the hallway, which was weird because my friend was one of the few on the floor that didn't play football and the football team was in Michigan (you'll see why this remains so clear in my mind in a minute.)
Anyway, a bunch of the redshirt freshman had been left behind and they were having a party. So I went and had a few drinks with the football team (bad experience... would require 'nother page of story). Fast forward to 2:45 Sat morning.... phone rings.
(I'll use our ISCA handles for some form of anonymity.... no we didn't address each other like this in person or online.)
Bowl of Ditka: Hello? You're where? Okay, well directions Okay, we'll see you in a bit.
Anti Christ (me): So where were they?
Bowl of Ditka: Coralville... they've been drinking.
Fast forward another 15 minutes or so... phone rings... 20 minutes of conversation... we figure out where they are... we have to walk 2 miles across campus to meet them. DOH!
So we walk the two miles. We get to the Handi Mart parking lot... spot a car with Missouri plates that matches the description we were given. We siddle up to the car... yep two females... little bit closer, the door opens. One Alpha Chic (assoc with Bowl of Ditka) gets out of the passenger side, Mixed Nuts (assoc w/ Anti Christ) gets out. I'm underwhelmed, Bowl of Ditka is happy, they're... well, they're drunk.
So we drive back to Bowl of Ditka's dorm. Mixed Nuts and I don't speak... Bowl of Ditka and Alpha Chic mix well. We get back to the dorm... it's 3:30 or so.
"Do you mind if we get on ISCA?" Alpha Chic asks. "We told someone we'd check in with them when we got here."
"Uh...... hrm..... I guess so." Bowl of Ditka says.
So, Mixed Nuts logs on... her and Alpha Chic chat excitedly as they type away. Bowl of Ditka and I sit in silence and glare. 30 minutes later...
"Fuck this, I'm going to sleep," I announce.
I'm disturbed by a commotion.... open my eyes, the lights on... WTF? Three figures are moving around putting on coats and shit. I look at the clock. It says, "It's 6 AM on a Saturday morning in Iowa City... go back to sleep, dumbass."
As I try to comply I hear, "Jesse, you awake?"
"Mmph...." Approx. equivalent to "Fuck off!"
"They're leaving."
Not comprehending I comply to the clock's demands.
Five minutes later I awake to the thought... "Oh shit, they're leaving!" I jump up, throw on my coat and run out to the parking lot.
Bowl of Ditka and Alpha Chic are at the back of the car fighting/making out. I never did get them. I could fill another 8 pages just beginning to explain the oddities in their relationship.
Mixed Nuts is sitting at the driver's wheel and it looks like she's been crying. She's got the window open and is smoking. I crouch down and ask what's going on. No response. Dumbfounded, half-asleep, utterly clueless I have absolutely no idea what to say do.
"Why isn't he saying anything?" Alpha Chic whispers to Bowl of Ditka. I get pissed, but still don't have anything to say. So Alpha Chic and Bowl of Ditka say their goodbyes... with tongue of course. I stare blankly at Mixed Nuts... Alpha Chic gets in the car. I say, "Umm... goodbye? I guess I'll talk to you when you get back???" No response. They leave.
I turn to Bowl of Ditka... "WTF?"
"They got in a fight with someone down at NWMS and decided to leave." he says.
"Yeah, but even so.... WTF? Did Alpha Chic talk to you?"
"Yeah, after you went to sleep she came over and sat on the bed with me and we talked. They were just nervous. Mixed Nuts stayed at the terminal though."
"I still don't get it."
"Neither do I." Bowl of Ditka responded.
Alpha Chic talked to me and Bowl of Ditka, but Mixed Nuts would only talk to Bowl of Ditka after that. I still don't have any sort of clue. Shortly, after that Alpha Chic and Bowl of Ditka broke up and the girls from NWMS went into ISCA rehab. I went on the wagon, but Bowl of Ditka kept on trucking.
About a month later, I met a girl from the U of N. Iowa (which was in my home town) who went by the nick of Jade Marie. We started calling each other a lot after meeting over semester break. Partly do to my relationship with her and also because "no class/homework" == "sub 3.0 GPA" == "loss of scholarship" I moved home and transferred to UNI the following year. We're still together now 4 years after we first talked online and it seems ridiculous to think we actually met online.
Lib.BENCH the only site you'll ever need!
His article about his relationship with his wife rings very true, whether you meet her online or off. Don't look for someone like you! I have two examples: my friend's wife and my own.
Caveat: I'm going to mention women a lot. Let us not confuse women with girls. They may both have breasts, but a girl won't give guys like us the time of day. High school is full of girls. College is mostly full of girls. You will eventually meet a woman. This is, of course, assuming that you are a man and not a guy.
My friend is a hard-core geek. He met his wife on a BBS. The chats moved to phone calls, which moved to frequent air travel (she was in Missouri, he in Maryland), which moved to me standing next to him at the altar holding the ring (thanks for that, bud). Yes, she used a BBS, but she is nothing like him, and they like it this way.
My wife is nothing like me, either. We met IRL, introduced by mutual friends. We are nothing alike either, which is to say that she's not a geek either. Like many women, she can use a computer, but she doesn't obsess about technology the way I do. This is a Good Thing.
When I want to geek out, I call up my other geek friends (the same ones I've had since High School), and we sit around, drink beer, play MtG, and talk about what was on slashdot that day.
The Point: It doesn't matter where you meet them, it just matters that you do. It's good to have overlapping interests, but they don't all need to overlap. It's better if they don't. There is nothing you can do that will impress a woman. It's what you are that attracts them to you. The great thing about a woman is that they can look at a man and say to themselves "well, he needs a little work, but there's something there worth having." That is why it works.
Well, I've got to admit that things like IRC and
e-mail make maintaining a long distance relationship much less expensive than it used to be. My grrl (kytiara@/.) and I met through mutual friends, and were friends for a little over a year when things started happening... unfortunately, I was 600 miles away, at college, when that happened. So, the initial 3 months of our romance was limited to short visits, lots of e-mail, and a lot of IRC msg'ing. Followed by 4 months of good, real-life spending time together, our relationship strengthened, and now, we're apart again until Thanksgiving.
It's painful and difficult to be separated from the one you love, but being able to communicate in one form or another practically 24 hours a day makes it somewhat more bearable.
What?
Body Language Secrets
"1/2 the time it's a 14 year-old boy named Jimmy from Wisconsin having some fun at your expense"
errr, correction
most of the time it's a 15 year-old boy named Johnny from Wisconsin having some fun at your expense.
I wanted out, tho. There's something, to me, that simply goes unfullfilled with the online relationship that is not lacking in normal F2F relationships. Besides the sex, I mean.
And don't get me wrong. I wrote a fragging thesis on the use of language online--you can transmit surprising amounts of information normally delegated to body-language. It's not the information, I posit, but the perception.
I've moved out of the OL arena to find dates, though I will occasionally drop a line to a particularly skilled (or interesting) webmistress to strike up a conversation. I've learned to dance and try to meet girls through off-line type ways. And, I live in Austin, so there are nerd/techie socializing events now and again
But as another
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
basically, she was out of shape and not physically attractive. but a great gal. just not someone i'm going to spend the rest of my life with.
to all other geeks out there looking for a mate, as much as you might hope that physical appearance is a non-issue, it is. it is THE issue. it is the issue below all issues. it is the 1.0a in the 4.69 of life. it is there, it is the strongest force, and it makes or breaks the possibility of the final product.
you can tell if you're meant for someone just by looking at them, so PLEASE GET PHOTOS of your online grrlfriends.
wisely,
harv
"..Constructive critizism is always welcome however."
Ok, I exagerate I have met and dated women in real life. But seriously there is a 6 to 1 guy/girl ratio in my engineering classes, and if my summer internships are representative, the ratio is much worse out in the electronics industry.
Even if I was willing to lower my standards enough to date a non-nerd (I usually just want to strangle any non-nerd I'm forced to spend more than 5 minutes with) their opionion of me is usually even lower then my opinion of them. Even on the occations that I run into a non-geek that doesn't flee in terror from me and doesn't piss me off by being pathetically stupid, we have nothing in common and no way to break the ice.
I'm not addicted to my computer, in fact, it's my hobby of last resort when I can't think of anything else to do, but half of the women I've dated, I met online (not that that's a very big number). It's really one of the only places to find enough geek girls.
Around last May I attempted the online personals.
Why? Varied reasons. I had just ended a 3.5 year relationship, I had to move out, into a corner of a living room of a friend's apartment, I was stressed, my job was starting to be hell, and quite frankly, I was lonely, hurt, and afraid. I was never one for the dating scene - that relationship that had just ended had been the highlight of my life.
So I started poking around. I believe it was match.com that I found this one on - I sent a reply, she mailed me back - the second email from her was, "Hey, give me a call, 555-1234, we'll go out Friday night". Hrm. Alright - I had kinda hoped to correspond a bit before we met, but what the heck - I've nothing better to do.
So we went out. Went over to her pad to pick her up, she opened to door. Wow. Kneejerk reaction - _not_ my type. At all. Don't get me wrong - she was very pretty (not the type of girl I expected to see off the net, on a personals ad - maybe that was a clue?) but I knew this would probably be a weird date.
So we went out...had a few too many beers...she invited me up to her place when I dropped her off, we smalltalked for a while, she said she was getting tired, I stood up to leave in a gentlemanly manner, and she decided to kiss me.
Rather boggled I was; I am neither the most attractive nor in-shape person I know.
But nature took it's course that night. I should have said no.
I'm a good guy. Raised right, I respect the female gender, I treat them like goddesses. This floored me - I was feeling guilty - we tried to make a relationship happen on nothing but sex.
The silence whenever we were alone together - astounding. The times I wanted to just stand up and walk out of that apartment were countless. After 7 months the decision was made for me - I'm glad it happened before I started to hate her.
So what the hell am I posting this bit on a public forum for? (And quite frankly, embarassing myself in front of millions?)
For one reason - Be You.
Don't care if she seems to be god's gift to mankind, don't care if you can talk about everything _but_ 'puters and science and whatever - don't care if she's the best damn lay you've even had. Be you. If she can't take the fact that you're a hard-coding, game-playing, sense-talking, steely eyed hardware man, give her a miss.
Get to know her. Evaluate her. You, reader, are a good catch. You're going places. You may not be the best looking thing, maybe not even the funniest or the most romantic - but you've got the leg up on 80% of the men out there. You're a good guy, the anti-fratboy, her mom will like you. No matter how lonely you are, how long it's been since you've been in love - if it's not right, skip it.
Just thought I'd pass that along - the synopsis of the "You got a good thing" speech the girl I had the 3.5 year relationship gave me. (we're best friends now)
Anyway. I'm doing making a fool outta myself.
TY
What is the divorce rate in the US now? At least 50% and going up. The divorce rate for an American man marrying a non-American woman is SIGNIFIGANTLY LESS. Considering that women file for most divorces (between 80% - 90% depending on the state), that means in the future that an American man that gets married can expect his wife to divorce him. Also, consider that most divorces usually have reasons like, "I need more space" and "I need to grow" and other BS reasons, the American man won't know what hit him.
I met my sweetie in the planning of Windows Refund Day. If you want to impress a geek gal, try having a Very Cool Event (tm). I recommend looking over the SVLUG's past event list for ideas. Hint: Windows 2000 is slated to be released practically on the anniversary of Windows Refund Day!
Oh, and then Rick Moen charmed me with his masculine wiles and I moved, changed jobs, etc. We're all happy now.
_Deirdre
Exactly. People can be complete liars online. I too had one of those "relationships." It ended badly, but life goes on.
That said, people can be liars in person too.
_Deirdre
I know the woman in question and you're right. She's a fascinating person. The web site may have changed to suit her mood (rather than by hate mail); she's rather mercurial. Still, your post is very touching.
Some corrections: he didn't send the email to everyone in the company. He sent it to a group of people both inside and out of the company from his company email account. Those people sent it further along and one of those sent it to her; another of those sent it to me (mine might have been 3rd generation rather than 2nd). I also received a copy forwarded from her.
While prompt action of censure and reprimand would have worked, because the company delayed their actions, they eventually fired him.
PS - anyone who thinks MLM is fat obviously prefers dating corpses. She's underweight.
_Deirdre
i'm 25 and have never even kissed a girl. sigh.
That's not the main thing of course. What makes online dating so real is that many restrictions fall away. It's much easier to overcome the embarrasment of asking a personal question, and you can formulate it much better because you have the time to think about it. This makes for an environment where you open yourself up much faster. Generally, it's much more honest as well. It's easier to describe intimate personal details when you don't have too look in the other person's eyes.
The effect is that what's connecting online is two people at a deeper level than all social interface crap. We're talking inter-process communication, just short of having shared memory, rather than 2 GUIs trying to interact by reading eachother with cameras and doing real-time vector-processing. (Consider that geeks are generally bad at that real-time stuff).
Additionally, if you're so physically attracted to eachother like my SO and I are, you at least have the opportunity to control your libido ;-) Or, of course, let it run wild, no matter how far away you are. (She and I are on different continents ATM).
Yes.
and did it end up working out for the better?
No.
My wife and I first met on a Christian Singles mailing list. We were 1000 miles apart. After five months of email and telephone conversations, she moved to an apartment just 15 minutes away from where I lived. Seven months after that we were married. We now have two wonderful kids and 5 Linux servers. :-)
Hey all... Time for me to post my $0.02 worth, on this whole subject. I have been in the "online romance" situation before, on one occasion, and I have a pile of thoughts. So...
First things first: It CAN work. It is possible to have an online romance that is successful. For about 18 months, once, I had that type of relationship, and, though the distance has a tendency to get in the way, it can also be a wonderful way of becoming close to another person.
However...
The difficulty with online romance is that it is entirely a fantasy world: the romance occurs somewhere that exists only in the minds of the two people. The transition from that fantasy to the real world (where, when things are bothering you, or upsetting you, you CAN'T simply terminate the connection or hang up the phone), is the genuinely diffiuclt part of the relationship. If both people are well prepared for that transition, and are okay with that transition in themselves, it can go smoothly. However, having experience, and having seen friends go through the experience, I have noticed that a lot of people aren't willing to experience the transition from fantasy to reality; many people go online to escape their real worlds, and the bridging of that fantasy into their real world is too much. This was, in many ways, the cause of the end of my online relationship (which, by the time it ended, was incredibly real)... unfortunately, in hindsight, she was the closest person to the equal partner in my life that I've ever met.
The other caveat I have about online relationships is that they WILL test a person; they will require a level of honesty and openness that a lot of people aren't ready for. When all two people have are words, there's a lot of things that you can't get away with in an online relationship that you could in a RW relationship. You can't go watch a movie together, and not talk for 3 hours when you're angry; you either talk, and deal with it, or you don't. You have to be willing to deal with the things that get in the way of your relationship in a relatively productive manner; otherwise, the relationship disappears far too easily.
Anyways, there're my thoughts for today... This has been a good way to procrastinate...
Mike
i for one had the toughest time trying to find someone in the local vicinity where i lived three years ago. I met my wife on a text based chat line (talker). I had had some internet relations before this one - but they just didn't work out. I wasn't really even looking when i met my wife. We sort of just clicked in a way that i just knew that she was the 'one'. I was crazy enough to even drive there over my christmas vacation and meet her. She and I dated for a while and then she moved in with me the next may. We both moved to where she was from -- and we lived there for 2 years. we now are back to the area where i'm from - and continue to be happy. So it is possible. All i can say is to be careful. people can try to 'screw' you over. (been there done that)
- I'm a firm believer in some form of telepathy, mostly out of firsthand experience. I don't hear throughts per se, but I can definitely read emotions and reactions at close range (within 10-100m). It's something I've come to depend on, and it just doesn't work over an electronic connection for obvious reasons.
- People with faces are important to me. I'm still at entry-level geekdom - I work in tech support. This means I talk to 30-50 people every day for whom I never match a face. Now I grew up learning the concept that a couple must be friends before they're anything else, that they must know something about each other. My concept of "knowing someone" includes seeing their face, and I don't just mean in photos, etc.
- When you get right down to it, there is still no online substitute for a hug, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Now, this all falls under the usual category of personal opinion and experience, so feel free to disagree, ridicule, point and laugh, whatever. Just where I stand.-Drayke
-Drayke
-Drayke
If all the world's a stage, it must have been an easy audition.
If she is wearing a skirt you would serve the additional purpose of blocking a strategic line-of-sight as she gets out of the car.
---CONFLICT!!---
I met Pamut (her nickname)online via Yahoo Personals. I was in San Francisco, she was in Budapest, Hungary. For months we were online together whenever possible until finally I flew to Budapest to meet her. A few days later we married. This did not end our online romance as she could not return to the U.S. with me (immigration laws being what they are). Seven more months of the limitations of the internet and the occassional phone call (you should see some of my phone bills!) went by before she could move here permanently. We have been physically together since August and could not be happier.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Hiya folks,
... instead, just go talk to that one. Subtlety is the key.
/so/ drooling all over the carpet...'
While I think this discussion definitely has a place on Slashdot, the most important thing to remember about anything having to do with relationships is that everyone is different, even if they do exactly the same things for a living. There are similarities between the kinds of things 'geeks' look for; that is, we might be more sensitive than 'jocks' and such, but there are exceptions to every crowd.
That said -- with the disclaimer that I am not any kind of expert on the subject -- I'll relate my personal experience in a very brief form.
The most important thing any geek (anyone at all, in fact) has to ask themselves is 'What do I want in a woamn?' Some people look for mates with similar lifestyles to their own, i.e. one geek finding another online and getting married. That's cool. Sometimes it works. You have a whole lot in common, which is a good thing.
Personally, though, I look for people who aren't the same as me, people who will jar me out of the little bubble I live in (and especially go to school in) and give me a new perspective on things -- soemone who will force me to do something I wouldn't have done on my own.
A bit of background: I am, at least from 9-5, a geek. I'm a network technician and all of the jobs I've had and still have involve me working with computers nearly all of the time. I'm also a musician and an actor, and so I have a life outside of my 'work' -- something I highly reccommend to anyone who works in an industry as engulfing as IT. My SO is not involved with computers at all, doesn't really like them, and has little interest in the specifics of what I do. She's also drop-dead sexy, far beyond the sort that I ever thought I could win over.
The best advice I can give to a Slashdotter (or anyone else) looking for a mate is: Don't actively seek out a mate. Or at least, if you do, don't make it look that way. If you're not trying, you're being yourself; you're not stressed out over what someone else's impression of you is, and you're not worried about what they think of you. Even if you are concerned about these things, the trick is to 'act natural' -- don't have any expectations. Don't say 'I want that one to come home with me tonight'
Be flexible. Most fulltime IT people (which, thankfully, I am not) have extraordinarily hectic schedules. Make sure your priorities are in order. An understanding mate should be able to accept that you'll have emergencies periodically, but if you find yourself spending every weekend and holiday at the office at her expense, no matter how justified your employer might be in asking you to go, your relationship will suffer. One of the biggest problems among adult relationships is that a lot of adults simply don't have (or make) time for them.
So in summary:
-- Expand your horizons. If you spend 24/7 doing IT stuff, try to find a hobby or something that you're interested in, something you're passionate about (unless you really get dramatic over routers and hubs). People like that. Not just women.
-- Don't be an asshole. If you're the kind of person who pushes five scrillion buttons to get the first post in on Slashdot all the time, you're spending too much time on Slashdot, and you need to go outside and see if prolonged exposure to the sun doesn't melt your epidermis. Also, if you're the kind of person who posts exclusively 'Jon Katz is a moron,' 'Aquitaine is a Moron,' 'I hated this article,' or 'Fuck off,' then you're got other issues to deal with.
-- Be thoughtful/spontaneous. Have limits, though. Some women get easily freaked out by things that they are 'traditionally' supposed to like. I know one girl who hates roses because they make her feel obligated. And yet the best thing she says any guy did for her was to give her one blue-and-red rose. Makes no sense. Women are like that. Female != Logic gate.
-- Have confidence. You're probably smarter than at least a good portion of the competition, but the trick is: don't compete. You care, but die before you'd ever admit it before the finish line. This makes for good stories later, too -- 'Remember that time I totally ignored you at Joe's? Yeah, well, I was
-Aqui
In general (--read tht three times before advancing)
nearly every woman i've met online has lied *fairly heavily* about themselves.
the male friends i've met seem more more honest.
hopefully, this is uncommon? just a bad run of luck? some cultural thing?
well, just something i've noticed. a lot of people might dislike the post, oh well.
Most of the time, if two people on IRC get to know and like each other, they'll make plans to meet/date/whatever. That is how they get it to work, usually -- they become friends on IRC, then they meet and become something more. There are people that try to have a meaningful relationship entirely on IRC or MU* (it usually involves some sort of role-playing, I've noticed), but I've also noticed that for many of them, it's never enough -- they want RL interaction, even if it's completely non-committal.
I've been through the whole "trying to fall in love over IRC" thing; the biggest lesson I learned is that, well, it doesn't work (not to mention that the girl's personality turned out to clash with mine very often, and that it was an LDR). I'm smarter for it now, even though it took a while to realise it.
-lee
Well, here's the deal. Reading a.s.f has helped me out greatly.. But I don't listen to everything that goes on there. I basically use it as a crash course in social skills. Things that are mentioned there that I don't do:
... This year she was my date to homecoming.
NLP
Lie about self after eliciting values
Patterns
Lie about type of relationship wanted
Things I've learned and do:
3 second rule (Initate contact within 3 second of seeing/making eyecontact with woman)
Don't supplicate (Don't buy her drinks before you talk to her)
Confidence
Not being afriad to joke/talk about sexual things
Basically there is a very thin line between being a nice guy and an asshole.. You must be in the very central nutral zone.
Be confident, and not needy. Make yourself a nice catch (Go get a haircut at Toni and Guy's, and start caring about your looks if you want to be social). By being fun, confident, humorous, etc, and not needy.. You will have her chasing you instead of the other way around. Don't be afriad to walk to a girl, make some convo, and get her phone number.
In 10th and 11th grade I lusted over a girl on the dance team that I thought was way out of my league (I was just a geek.)
Maybe this is just me, but I wouldn't worry too much about the best/worst way to meet the opposite sex. Do things you enjoy, and do them well. Invariably, you will meet others people during the course of these activities and sooner or later, one of them will be attractive to you. If you do what you do well, they might even be interested in you, too. Maybe you'll get along, maybe even go on a date. Then again, maybe not, and so you wait for the next one. For me at least, good things come to me only after I stop looking for them. You might find this holds true for you as well. Good luck! :)
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." -- John Lehman, Secretary of the US Navy 1981-1987
yeah the only problem is when you are horny and went out of porn and your network connection is down... ok that doesn't happen all the time.
the reason you're "internet relationship" last so much longer is because you don't have to interact with the parson all the time. if you don't want to talk, you turn of your instant messages, or don't check your email. I've been in long distance relationships that are the exact same thing. everything is great because you don't really spend time with each other. even if you talk every night, or more often, it isn't real human contact. if you spent all that time physically with the person, things might be different. If your ultimale goal is to find someone to spend the rest of your life with, what are you gonna do, only talk through chatrooms?
My english teacher met her husband on a MUD. I guess it worked out.....
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
She doesnt sound very psycho, trust me, the psychos I've dated have set my jeans on fire with a cigerette lighter, biten me on the neck so hard that it was weeks before it healed, chucked a shoe at me, which when it hit me in the nuts had me crying on the bed for 1/2 an hour, not to mention shouting fits in museums etc etc, I seem to attract them somehow, just wish I could flip the polarity and repel them.
I met my first love online. Interestingly enough, her first mail was misdirected to me, instead of reaching the intended recipient (me being administrator and such). We talked for a while online, met and eventually wound up together. The relationship only lasted for a few months, but I learned something from it. People behave totally different when they're online than when they're offline. It was as if she had two totally different personalities, one for online purposes and one for offline purposes. Oh, and she wasn't even a computer geek. Geek in other parts of life, sure, but no computer geek. That's chance for ya.
How are you defining geek? I don't consider myself a geek in the sense that I don't program much, I don't know all that much about kernels and OSes, but my boyfriend is a programmer and I adore hearing about what he's doing and especially when he'll take the time to show/explain how things work. I may not understand to the same degree that someone with 5 years of programming experience behind them might understand, but I have the interest.
All I'm trying to say is that just because she's not a geek does _not at all_ mean that "she doesn't care about what new thing [you] learned today." The best relationships are based on communication, and speaking from mine, talking about one of the the most important things in his life is something I really enjoy.
My entire life is rather hypocritical, because a few years ago I was totally against dating online, now it's the only way I CAN date. It's great! I suggest everyone get themselves a copy of ICQ (or a clone) and jump right in!
But there's only one problem...it's not physical. You may never meet the person, especally considering he lives in Utah and you live in New York...it's impossible to feel what it's like to touch them. If the guy I like (in real life) touches me, even slightly, I get this warm, orgasmic feeling. I'm not dating him; I probably never will. If I want to date, I date online. But I can't feel what I feel for that person, what I feel with this other guy in reality.
And because of that element, that one drawback, online dating never works. It fills the void, yes, but you can never touch them, you can never have that tingley feeling inside, because they're not really touching you, they're only doing it, "hypothetically."
Damn. Now all we need to do is think up a way to send human movement over fiber optic lines : )
miyax
I agree we need some standardisation in the mating signals dept. I'll just whip up a duel ISO / ANSI proposal, we can call the oversight body the Open Sexual Signals Group (OSSG), I think we need to be quick before M$ gets in with a proprientry version as it gives a new meaning to embrace and extend. When I am finished on the draft, comments from /. for ISO 9669 (AKA Prodix 1.0) will be gratefully accepted. This has been a comic announcement....
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Click to see how my wife and I met.
I'm a technologically-minded female myself (The term 'geek girl' is a little grating to me) and though I don't know ANYTHING about finding a mate through technology, I can tell ya my best friends were made through technology.
;] Shortly thereafter, I bought my own access and I've been wired ever since. With this new gateway to the world I've found a myriad of geekish compatriots all over the world.
Flashback: March 1998. I put off a high school science fair project until the absolute last minute, trying several unsuccessful things with a black light, Plexiglas, and bacteria. (Never mind.) Two nights before the science fair, my dad hits on the idea of me showing off computer animation. I lugged my P5-133 to school and set it up in a fairly secluded corner of the commons, lost amid the run-of-the-mill plant experiments, and began to show off relatively lame WWWGifanimator/MSPaint concoctions I'd labored on.
Two guys came up. One was my age, and talked to me just about the whole time. He taught me quite a lot about my computer in that short time (I was a hapless Windows weenie then.) Later, he would tell me about hacking, which led to reading the friggin' manual, which led to Linux. We also built my new system last summer, which was 72 hours of geek camaderie, wrestling with IRQ's, and a very, very bad OSR2. You wanna learn to respect a guy? Watch him hold your hard drive in his big geeky hands. The guy's my best friend. He knows most of my passwords, the voltage of my motherboard's battery, and a number of other things I wouldn't trust to any but the bestest geek.
The other guy at the science fair was his younger brother. We played Descent for hours upon hours. He's still one of my geeky pals too. Even though he won't touch Linux with a 10-foot pole...A friend of his enjoyed Descent and graphics as well. Voila, another geek buddy.
The younger brother allowed me to use his Internet access two summers ago. Eventually he made me quit...but the eldest one gave me the passwd again.
As for a mate? I have no idea. But the geek life is never without socialization...you just need to know where to look.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
About a month after she quit her job, she sent me a "How's it going?" email. I replied, she replied back. Gradually, the conversation became more involved an more interesting. Three months after the first email, we went out on a date. Five months after that, we moved in together. Five months after that, we were married. And I can't believe I was stupid enough to have ignored this incredible woman for an entire year!
There's something to be said for meeting people online, but a far more overlooked but better way to use the Internet is to use it to get to know the people you are already acquainted with!
I w0z on the net awhile ago (actually, 119,144 internet seconds ago) and I met my true romance. She was on /dev/gf on my remote Linux system. I met her and we t0lked for ABIT. But I had my heart broken when I found out she was actually an IP router running at 192.34.20.1 but she was behind a firewall, so her real IP address was 192.34.20.2. I thought I would have to condemm all females as liars. I was so hErT. I caled her a wh0re.. (she simply responded with a SERVER CANNOT RESPOND TO THIS REQUEST message) she called me an INVALID COMMAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :():(:(:($#())@$#*($#@*()$#@)*($#@)*($#@)*($#@)*($ #@)*(_)(#@!(~ Thankfully now I have hitched up with a delicious symbollic link sitting on my local hard drive at /usr/local/likes_bondage -> /dev/kernel/sys/0001/inode/006644/13209321/PCI/enu m/13.
This is not meant to be disparaging or a flambait but I had to take a moment to comment on this continuation of stressing over relationships.
For the last few weeks or so, slashdot, it seems to me, has been obsessing over how geeks/nerds/the social pariahs, etc, can get into good relationships? But..seriously, what is the median age in this forum? Last I remember from the polls, most people were in their 20's! Maybe I am a hopeless optimist (who is also in that 20's without that special somone) but the only thing people should remember is that you can't just go *searching* for it. Believe it or not, there is a looong life ahead for most of us, and you should start looking at life, enjoying the singleness/freedom as much as you can because there will come a time when it won't be there! Start enjoying life, be happy, and trust me, people will like you more (and maybe you'll get dates once in awhile too).
I have friends who are in deep relationships and some who are married. They are happy in their own ways, but it isn't something to be too envied. This might be sweet lemon, but I can't feel too bitter about my situation.
If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Stop stressing out and relax. If you meet someone online, great! If you don't, great! I am too skeptical to rely on just *one* method and online meeting is just one way. It doesn't hurt for you to go out and associate with *real* (versus virtual) people once in awhile.
Ok, enough gibberish.
Now we return to the regularly scheduled program.
I've been online since about 1991 or 1992 (I forget exactly) and was about 13 or 14 when I first started using BBS's and pre-web Internet. At that point it was almost all chat and email as naturally with 2400 baud modems and a text/ANSI interface there wasn't as much going on. Sure at first you have trouble understanding quite how big the Net really is and your not used to being so honest with people you have never met. It can be a bit of a shock. Some people panic and others get addicted. After a while /most/ people just get used to it and learn to recognize people that are full of bullshit and those who aren't and as they develop rings of friends they can meet new people by being introduced by a trusted friend which again makes it easier to expand. Most people online who know me well can recognize me by the way I talk and the way I shape my sentences even if I'm being anonymous or using a different name. I think people have a lot more ability to recognize people and their intentions in such situations than would be assumed since we use the abilities so seldom in real life. My general feeling now is that I may as well be totally honest both online and in real life because you may as well have friends that like you for who you are and not who you make them think you are. If people don't like it then they can screw off. The truth is people online have far less ability to hurt you than people in real life. I have considered it carefully and in all honesty it's far easier to be caught by talking some girl into meeting you in real life and then doing bad things to her than it'd be if you just went out and kidnapped somebody off the street. Think about it, you're recorded all over the place.. and you have to go out of your way to go nab that person. Duh! Okay maybe I'm not a criminal but they can't all be stupid. If people think teenagers are going to be hurt by seeing dirty ideas or bad language in text then they've obviously not been to a highschool in a long long time because from what I remember from highschool is people having sex against lockers and in the back of the school bus and damn the worst language I've ever heard comes from preschool kids. Get a clue people! :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
For what it's worth, I've had a grand total of one online relationship. We met playing a MUSH. After we'd played together for a while, we started talking together out-of character. Then came a phone call, then more. Then, she came up to visit me on Spring Break.
/wanted/ those things. Golden rule, and all that.
That was in 1994. We've been married now for two years, and I don't think I've ever been happier.
I don't consider myself an expert on relationships, by any stretch of the imagination. I've been in a grand total of two, including this one. I've done my best to be "the good guy": to be as honest, understanding, and giving as I can. As far as I can tell, good relationships are predicated on nothing more complex than concern for your partner, honesty, and laughter. I've been lucky enough to find a wonderful relationship, but I was also sharp enough to remember to act in a manner that showed that I
Feh. Enough rambling. I wish you all the luck in the world. Love is a complicated thing, and I make no pretense of understanding it. So my advice: don't bother trying. Just live in the moment, be nice, and remember to laugh. That's basically what worked for me.
I did a search for info on the supposed author and could not find any, and considering this woman author is supposed to be post grad etc, my best guess is some nameless model on the cover and the book is written by a guy to make some money, sorry if it sounds cynical, but I've seen so much BS like this before.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
*Laugh* :) This just had to crop up now, didn't it.. :) :) Was a nice surprise indeed.. :) :) ;) :) :) :) and here I go.. Don't know why I'm scribbling things down when there's cuddles to be had..
Oh dear..
I just turned 30 on Saturday.. Not that bad you may say, old sod others may say.. The bit that's on topic, is that on friday, my girlfriend flew out from the States to the UK where I am...
This was a surprise.. I'd only talked to her the day before, and no warning, no clue whatsoever..
We met online on a mud, years back, and had been friends for years and years.. Met in real several times in that duration, but was only recently we actually caught the clue we really did kinda like each other.. An awful lot..
Well, I just dialed up to send a couple of pics (not those sorta pics) back to her for keepsakes, and though, check Slashdot, see if anything's happened... And lo!! This is here....
Now, she's hovering over my shoulder as I write this, laughing... And threatening to molest me, tho I shouldn't be writing that apparently..
Things are good here..
Personally, I think the two of us are going to end up together for good... And she just said she thinks so too...
It's been a long while in the coming about... So, I think we know each other well enough to judge that...
Within the next year (mebbe just over, who knows, but not much longer than that), either I'll move there, or she'll move here for a while..
Watch this space, as it were...
The great thing about online is that instead of being shoehorned into only being able to choose the partner you want from the two streets next to you... You can search the whole world for someone who's the one you want...
I think I did..
Anyhow, there ya go..
Byee.
Malk
ha. damn anonymous cowards...
:) no reason to hide it... and YES. i do have a certain personal interst in this. cope with it.
if your are going to say you like it that way then slap your email up there.
OH MY GOD ITS THE INVASION OF THE BISEXUAL GEEKS
eh hehe
//Insert Meaningfull Quote Here
I was involved with someone for a long time. We lived together more than 7 years. She started spending a lot of time online. First she played Interactive Card Games and chatted. Then she stopped spending time with me, always saying that she was busy with work. But of course I knew she was goofing off online all the time. I couldn't get her to pay any attention to me and our sex lives dwindled down to nothing. I know that she has posted personal ads on the Internet and chats via AIM and long distance and sends SMS messages to others. Eventually, she had the opportunity to meet one of her online buddies and she slept with him. She totally broke my heart. We had other problems (that I think could have been worked out) but the saftey and anonymity of the internet made it easier for her to ignore me and live in a fantasy world with other men that she barely knew, while I stupidly hoped she would snap out of it. On the other hand, my brother met his fiance online. So some people are finding happiness, while others are using it as a tool to break up relationships.
I can't say that I've ever really met/found any interest in women who were as obsessed with their computer (and, hence, programming, etc.) as I am, but I'll throw this out there, anyway. ;)
Two things to avoid: dating someone who is precisely like you and dating someone who is nothing like you. This seems obvious, but it merits being said once or twice (or more). You need to have enough common ground to relate, and enough differences to make it interesting.
For me, finding a creative/writer type with a sense of humor that matches mine (along with being honest, direct, trustworthy, and otherwise possessed of a sweet, loving/lovable personality, but let's be brief for once) is much more important to me than finding someone who also sits in front of the computer hacking away merrily on her favorite software project.
This is not to say that a relationship wouldn't work out between two people utterly obsessed with their computers (I myself would not turn down an oppurtunity based solely on such a false misconception), but it pays to focus your attention on other aspects. What's the worse that could happen? Your SO actually drags you away from your monitor every once in a while? I, for one, rarely object (read: never).
However, dating someone who is totally computer illiterate.. maybe not the best idea in the world..
~ Kish
I'm going to make this very short. I've had three major relationships in my life, two of which were started online. All I can say is that I'm *far* happier in the one that wasn't started online than I ever was with the other two. Dr. E
I saw the woman of my dreams at Usenix LISA 99 in Seattle: long hair, nice smile, and she seemed friendly. Better yet, I'm guessing she's a system administrator since she's at this conference. I don't think she'd give me the time of day though, but I guess I have the rest of the week to give it a try, unless of course she is already taken (which is a possibility since some other geek has probably already snagged her). And I'm sure it is unlikely she lives anywhere near me. (LD geek relationship potential!?)
It seems like technical conferences would potentially be good places to meet women with the same types of interests though. Anyone had any luck at meeting women at technical conferences? How do you strike up a conversation without sounding like a desperate fool?
-Sad me.
I did a similar thing a couple weeks ago, only in my case she answered and I actually asked her out before I found out she had a boyfriend. It sure made the class I have with her feel pretty weird from then on...
With a little effort it can be easy to find nice people to talk to online, but we all know there is more to a person than chat. No, I don't just mean looks. :-) When you get to know someone though you do want to evaluate other qualities, like looks, voice, how they act in real life, and soforth. Unfortunately, this is where online romance gets frustrating.
Many people you meet online are nowhere near you. Rightly so, both are often afraid to meet in real life. Not all of those meetings work out. Physical proximity does make romance, and weeding out the bad apples much easier.
So the question becomes, how to people meet others locally online? Sure, there are "match maker" services, but typically they have few people in your area, even if you live in a major metropolitan region. Most chat services don't have representation for geographic areas, and those that do (eg, state channels on IRC) are a poor place to meet people. They tend to be full of married people killing time between feeding the kids.
So the question becomes, how can we improve the ability of net-based services to introduce you to local people that you might consider going to lunch with? That's a lot lower barrier than flying out somewhere for a week with someone you hardly know. Is this just a problem where there aren't enough people online yet? Is it a problem of having too many search services, so people are spread out? Is it a problem that many people (even if single and "desperate") won't post singles ads?
I want answers! :-)
1. Show your feelings to people you fancy. If they don't know you're interested, they won't respond. Be nice to them and don't be too much of a HNG, but make sure they know how you feel.
2: Repeat 1.
Obviously, there are self confidence issues in this. Fear of rejection is the biggest one but a gross oversimplification in the general case. Just because you're a geek doesn't make you unattractive. One of my friends is very geeky, but he wears it with self-confidence. It "works" on him -- He's profoundly comfortable in his space and shows it. He attracted someone enough that she took the effort to seek him out.
Sophia Loren said something along the lines of "Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what you think you've got." I could go into a long story about some events in my life and a profound shift in my own sexual self-image, but I won't. What I will say is that the before and after effects were dramatic -- I'd say the ratio is more like 80/20. What we project in our mannerisms and body language reflects aspects of our personality and is by far the strongest force for attraction. Many physically attractive people give me a big soft-on through obvious falseness or mannerisms, facial expressions or other cues. Conversely, many physically plain people are very attractive through giving off a "warm vibe." Some of the sexiest people I know are not "lookers" at all.
Low self-esteem often goes along with geekdom because of the social stigmas attached to it. Any of Jon Katz's Hellmouth articles or articles related to them give a fairly realistic account of the formative experiences of geeks in most western school systems. They certainly gel with my experiences of High School. Geeks are also usually portrayed negatively on Television.
At the risk of making many sweeping generalisations that I promised not to make earlier, Much of this low self-esteem is an entirely artificial social construct (IMNSHO) and not really a function of any inherent fucked-upness. While adolescent geeks may often be immature, consider the average level of maturity of a "mainstream" 15-year old.
I could rant on this topic for hours (it's a pet subject, hadn't you noticed). Sometime I'll stop procrastinating and write a decent blurb on this topic.
I'm fourteen, and from Iowa.
But at least you got my name right.
I would just like to say, that after being on line since early 95, that the whole multiplul personality things is quite real. It happens to the best of us, even without our knowlage.
After have been online for that long, I have devoloped somewhere around 4 online personalitys, varying in age/sex/tendencys.
But, I don't belive that this is realy a bad thing, They are all me, or I am them. It's to the point that I use them in the Real world also, Note that this can cause a bit of confusion when the personality happens to be the wrong sex for the body. But, it works out quite well. They all have thier good points, and are well worth keeping around. I've got one to handle 'stressfull' situations, one to be the cudly type, and yet another that keeps life interesting for everybody.
Though, I'm shure that somebody would like to put me away for this 'problem', I realy do think it's good. If nothing else, it helps me to deal with being alone for extended periods of time. I can sit down, and have a 4way conversation with myself, and have totaly diffrent views come out. Although, it does confuse some people a good deal when they meet me in RL, and then the next time, I happen to be a totaly diffrent person, but people get usto it.
The personalitys change on thier own for the most part, though sometimes, I can coherse one to take control. But, this is rarely needed.
Well, enough about that, I'd also like to say that online relationships do work, but require a person to think with thier logical side first, and thier heard last.
http://www.xpurple.com
I was pretty clueless in high school, didn't like parties, haplessly tried to impress girls with things that only accentuated my geekish eccentricities. Like I wrote this assembly program on my Apple 2 computer back in '81 to compute Pi to 32768 digits. I handed her the printout, thinking she would be amazed. Instead she just backed away very slowly. Things have changed a lot since then. Geeks have become trendy, rich, powerful, etc. Even powerful enough to get pies thrown in their faces and antitrust suits brought against them.
Personally, I think dancing is the best kept secret, especially if you spend a lot of time in front of a screen every day. You can head to to a dance in the evening and get a solid 2 hours of great dancing, great music, fun & attractive women, and a solid workout. Lindy Hop is a very creative and improvisational dance and I think there's a very playful side to us all, especially to geeks who revel unabashedly in our signature eccentrities, and I find that improvisational dance is a great way to express that energy playfully with another women.
I'll never forget the time I first spun a women who really knew how to spin. Just a little overhand lead with the slightest rotational inertia, and she was spinning once, twice, then disappearing in a blur of blinding speed, her dress went horizontal from the centripetal acceleration, if its edge had been sharp, I would have been sliced in two. Then suddenly she was back in front of me not even noticing the look of awe on my face that told her in no uncertain nuances that she had just given me a sacred glimpse of something beyond imagining.
If you're lucky enough to live in the Bay Area check out this swing dancing calendar.
James
1. The angry overreaction. "What the hell's wrong with you? I can do it myself!" In this case, you know not to ask her again, and you also know that she might not be (IMHO) the world's greatest relationship material. Not because she is independent or a feminist (I am both) -- because she overreacts to little things. If you LIKE walking on eggshells it could still work, but I'd look elsewhere.
2. "No, it's OK, I've got it," accompanied by a friendly smile. This one's definitely independent and feminist as well, but she's calm about it. However, depending on circumstance, this could be a fairly clear indication that (if this is what you had in mind) she's not interested romantically.
3. (My usual flirting tactic back when I was single, and still used on my boyfriend from time to time.) She lets you do whatever for her, and then she makes a big, showy display of doing something similar for you. If she's anything like me, this is a fairly clear sign of interest as well as an attempt to weed out those guys who are extremely insecure about their masculinity. If you like her and value her company, you will accept this with good cheer and even look forward to it.
4. She giggles and lets you do whatever for her. Can be good, can be bad. She might be impressed by your chivalry, or she might be deliberately feigning helplessness because she's a) a Rules Girl or b) otherwise trying to put on a fake charming personality. If she's genuine and you like that sort of thing, this could work. But RUN, don't walk, from those who feign helplessness and/or incompetence -- it's even more irritating than legitimate, actual stupidity. These are the same girls who will only eat half of an expensive dinner that you bought because they're worrying about how fat they are since they have to *gasp* wear a size eight! (Yeah, I'm a bit bitter. A good male friend of mine just got dumped by one of these after several years, and he had no idea it was coming. Ugh.)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I've met a few guys from the net (as well as a lovely lady) and none of them have ever been disappointed by my appearance. I consider this a good thing. Of course, I'm not looking NOW *grin*, but I do think that you could do worse than finding someone on the internet. However, your best bet is probably to start talking to someone in something other than a "flirting" or "cybersex" area.
I did a lot of the net-romance thing in college. Two were complete psychos (why I stayed with one of 'em for five months, I'll never know), one just didn't work out and we don't really talk anymore, two that I was fairly serious about and starting to consider moving fell apart due to lack of transportation, but I'm still friends with them, and one I never met (due to his being on another continent) and we were never really a couple for that reason, but the interest was there and we are still friends
My boyfriend had a more difficult time meeting people online -- then again, he was living with parents (unlike me), and it's probably more difficult for guys due to the whole supply and demand thing. We did NOT meet online, and we're in the same town, but sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we'd run into each other online a few years ago.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
To be honest, I've found most "geeks" to be self-absorbed individuals. To restate the obvious, working on a computer long hours does not lend itself to socializing with others. It's a self-centered thing. I've been working with computers most of my life, and there were times when I became disenfranchised with the whole thing, and didn't touch a computer unless I had to. At those points in my life, I spent time learning how to socialize and pick up those "signals" that "geeks" don't seem to see. It's just like anything else; socializing requires practice - if you spend all your time plugged in, the social part of the brain atrophies. To look at relationships in a scientific/functional/black and white manner is a fallacy... They can be as little or as much as you make it. People can become one in more than a metaphorical sense, a connection that is near psychic... But externalizing a person and running tests on them to see how they react to you is a guarantee of failure. So be strong when you talk to members of the other sex. Don't run into the back corners of the subconscience when long-forgotton fears overcome you. Get to know them, and be honest, even if you step on a few toes. You are beginners... don't expect things to fall in your lap. And don't hope for a relationship with every member of the opposite sex you meet... you'll be in constant dissapointment. I really do think that the reality of complete control in computers create illusions of the nature of the greater reality... so step out of the digital for a while expand your horizons.
Well, I've done the exact opposite of what everyone's sugested; I've gone and met a woman on IRC, talked for 7 or 8 months, and now as soon as we can make arrangements, we're going to find a way to be together -- with no forseeable way that it should end. We met on-channel, and were just good friends for ages and ages; despite radically different backgrounds, we have so much in common, it's not funny. Likes, dislikes, political views, taste in poetry... you name it. We tried for a week or so, racking our brains to think of something we don't agree on. A fruitless quest -- we just get on so well, as friends, casual acquaintances, and with any luck, as lovers.
:)
Interestingly, we both hate the terribly ritualised mating ritual that society seems to demand; from cheesy pickup lines, to taking each other places they don't really want to go, spending too much money trying to impress each other, and generally going a very long way round a short corner.
We're both of us erm.. undersoocialised, I'm a geek, and she's just intelligent, quiet, and not given to partying on. Though not especially geeky, she knows more about puters than any non-geek I've come across, having early picked up the trick of bluffing like crazy, and getting away with it... and being right 90% of the time, too. Combine that with a the capacity to remember when she did get it right, and I think you may just have a definition of intellignce.
Shakes and I would never have had a snowball's of meeting in RL, we neither of us get out much, or were into picking up/being picked up... As I said, we were just friends before anything serious happened, and that mostly came about when circumstances threatened to render her permanently netless. We then realised that we'd come to rely on each other's being there, that life without each other wasn't something we either wanted to face.
(Love does seem to simply come down to mutual emotional dependency, doesn't it? Though the sum of the whole is certainly greater than the parts..
So by bypassing the usual Cute chick/make contact/ask out/go steady/etc routine, we've simply fallen together, in a stable, not-out-to-impress, hugely emotionally satisfying relationship -- one that we both feel we could continue indefinitely.
A sad case? Perhaps, but we're happy. We don't ask much, we neither of us wanted to be alone, neither did we want to play the date market... We think we've found our soulmates, and that's really all there is to know.
Will it work out? *shrug* perhaps not, but nobody can see how it could fail. Sure, there are a million mannerisms and little personality traits that you can't see in text mode, but we spent so much time trying to convince each other that it was surely a terrible idea, and failed miserably...
For better or worse, we've made our decision. We've invested far too much of our lives in each other to ever go back. If it fails miserably, then at leat we tried... and we have to do that, at least.
So yes, online romance *is* a good idea, I'd say it very definitely can work out, if you find someone you can respect, someone you get on with, someone you can ust TALK TO, without any hidden agenda... because infatuation *does* wear thin sometimes, and unless you're damn good friends, and compatile ones, the first rough patch will tear you apart. I've seen that happen far too often ever to forget: a girl friend is a friend who happens to be a girl, NOT vice-versa.
So far my last two girlfriends I have met online (BBS's...). They were by no means geeks but that was where I found them. It sure worked for me, but as they say, your mileage may vary...
Seriously? Do you want to date someone like yourself? I'm not being insulting here, I've done it, but what is there to build on? Having dated both "geek" and "non-geek" women, in my opinion, a relationship with a "non-geek" women has more scope for growth.
Lets take my current relationship, which was setup by a colleague at work. She's a sales support lass, so she can cope with email and SMS messages. She knows what the web is, and she kind of understands what I do. When I leave work to meet her, I don't have to continue thinking about computers, I can relax. We go to the cinema, eat out, concerts, and I don't look at a PC once. It broadens your horizons.
Compare this with my last geek relationship, I could talk about work, twiddle with my PC, discuss web techniques and so on. But it was just an extension of work, albeit with added sex.
It doesn't matter how you meet women, but if you meet them on-line you'll have to meet them in real life sooner or later. So why not start in real life?
Look outside your normal boundaries. Approach people you like. Talk to them. Don't view them as partners (well don't be obvious about it). And don't limit yourself to geek partners. There's a whole other world out there.
(Having said that, my girlfriend did understand enough to leave me to play for an evening when I bought my news graphics accelerator and SB-Live, so some understanding of boys/girls with toys is helpful!)
I got a friend from Sweden who met a California boy online, through some sort of web cht interface. After 6 months of "dating" she moved to San Diego to meet the guy. They are now hapilly married and they still live in California.
Well, they were not precisely geeks. But they sure were chat addicted !
Ceci n'est pas une signature
When I'm around girl I don't have a problem talking to them for the first time. I'm a good looking guy. They seam to like the openess and truth in my voice. They just sense that and relieze I'm a good smart kind person, but i have to push them away. I have no choice, I must. I won't declose but I'm sure you might be guessing. What does it matter anyways? I'll be lucky if i live to 25. Either by illness, self inflected sucide, or act of god. That's three years away, but I still think I would be lucky.
When 'Nicole' was stolen by the goverment, our drug use, and foolish actions of Nicole and my own actions I went into a deep depression. Five years later i might be missing her but at least I have relieze that it was partly due to my actions. I thought I was the cuase. That i was a person that could only hurt and not love. I was a just stupid kid with a gift from a god, which she was. I hurt her deeply and I just wanted to protect someone.
Since then I haven't been able to get close to anyone.
I started using Linux becuase it was something that could somewhat fill the vold in my head and heart left by her. But it was more to fill my mind with thoughts other then her. I knew I couldn't just let someone else in to replace her, she was to speical. So one day when i was laying on my bed i decided to do something and installed Linux. Now my life is no better then what was it was then but when I'm depressed, I can think about something else. mainly being depression of what I lost and what a waste i have mad of my life.
I found confort in a Ultima Online relationship last year mainly becuase i knew that we couldn;t hurt each other. I didn't even see a pic of her until 3 month after I stop playing the game and went for sysadmin and coding. She was a dream but something, like Nicole, i could never have.
Maybe one day i could find a person that would make me happy, but not today. But when I'm at a party and a woman is talking to me, it simply makes me feel good to know that here I have a wonderful person that something speical could happen, maybe it won't, but if I'm smart I can enjoy the feeling of being accepted for once, while I still can.
--MarNuke
MarNuke
I need a date!!! :)
When I went online about 6 years ago. I made a solemn vow to myself. Or actually I made the vow well over a year later when I had seen online love happen to some friends of mine. I vowed that I would not fall in love with someone over the net.
So all the time I have been online I never considered it a valid medium to meet a prospective partner with. I went out, I still do, twice in most weeks and met girls that way. Of course I met girls online, but I treated them just like I treated the guys I talked with, as friends, sometimes, once I knew them better as people to confide in.
Then one faithfull day, I found out that I felt more then friendship for one of the girls I had been talking with for over a year. I of course tried to ignore it, but our conversations got more and more intimate, and when she admitted to me that she was in love with me, I just felt overjoyed.
To cut a long story short, I visited her this summer (10 months after we confessed our love to eachother) and I will move over there this spring after I've graduated. I know we still have a long way to go, and many barriers to overcome, but we're both very much in love, and hope our relation will last once we're together.
The point I'm trying to make is that you ussually will find love on the last place you expect it. And more importantly you can't force yourself to love someone or NOT love someone for that matter. I have no recipe for love, on- or offline, and I doubt there is one. There's just this simple bit of advise, which is valid both on the net and irl: Be yourself, that the most likely way to find a partner that suits you.
Beware of Wight Supremacists!
You know what I think? Well i think that maybe meeting people on IRC or something like that is better then meeting people in RL. My idea is that you can be who you want to be. Which is in some ways who you really am. I have thought before that chatting on IRC brings out parts of me that isn't real. Parts of me that i didn't believe existed in real life. But now thinking again after putting 5 more years under me ( 18 finially) I think it is the reverse. With your RL peers your are after a while shoved into a sort of a mold. People expects you to act in a certain way and so you act in that certain way. Some times i get really pissed off that way. When I know I am not the same person i was but my friends keeps treading me like before. So maybe meeting people online allows us to "start over". So we act how we feel be who we like.
I've always been super-shy, so I've tried the online thing a few times, w/ one big success.
I also figured a few things out along the way, at least things that make sense for how I am -
1: move to "real life" asap. E-Mail gets boring fast. As soon as you've established the basics, meet in person and don't go back. In my experience on-line interaction of any kind is massively limiting when you get right down to it, it breeds all kinds of miscommunications, too.
2: Pay attention to what it is you're doing on-line. The same things that make it easier to interact with people on-line also make it easier to hurt people once you turn it into something real. That's not something anyone should toy with.
My story - I had what could have been a success w/ a girl I met on my dial-up BBS back in '95 or so (yeah, back when a 386 with a 172MB hard drive was passable as an all-purpose online fileserver) - she was nice, but I handled the first meeting badly and really made her uncomfortable and nervous, then stalled too long before a second meeting. The big success was a bit over a year ago, met a very beautiful, smart, and affectionate girl. We were very like-minded, had an almost year-long relationship w/ lots of good times.
Oh, and for the flamers, a friendly hello and "eat shit". Yada Yada, we already know you don't respect people less socially adept than yourselves. But somehow I really don't think insulting people would be rewarding to a person who's already happy with their life. So fuck off already and quit wasting our time.
Jaa ne,
---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
Maybe Geeks prefer woman which do have respect for our obsesion with Geeks-tuff but who don't fall into the Geek-category themselves? I can count myself into this category. If my girlfriend would like computers, math, etc. I would have no moment with that: work, education, hobby and everything in between. My girlfriend is about the only thing that keeps me in touch with the real world - it seems that that the real world isn't just that what I see at my Vision Master Pro! Armin
I am fifteen, and some might call me a "geek girl". I hang out with all the tech people, I adore computers, and can usually be found in front of one. However, my interests also run beyond that, including art and theater and whatnot. I also have several other groups of friends that encourage me to leave my computer desk in search of some fun. I am incredibly tolerant and understanding to geek lifestyle, because no matter how much I go out and do other things, I am a computer person at heart. The point of the rambling is to show that balance is good -- I am currently dating a geek guy, and we don't get upset with each other when we want to stay home and code a bit instead of going out. We also talk over ICQ, and see each other nearly every day at school. You can date a geek girl and still recieve balance.
Main bit of advice?
Do what you want. But anything's possible.
-k-
Some guys love dumb girls, girls they can manipulate or at least lead. Maybe attraction to geeks is another form of this. Someone without a lot of confidence or inner strength is likely to be a lot more open in all circumstances to suggestion, even control. Note that there's nothing wrong with any of this, it all depends on what's the right kind of relationship for both people involved and whether the dominant one is going to make the relationship an abusive one. Also keep in mind, it's just a theory. jaa ne, ---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
I think her site got slashdotted right off of webjump. I couldn't actually get a look-see the last geek-dating conversation that came up either...Poor Elfbabe, and folks wonder why there's only like 3 girls on peer2peer...
Your absolutly right. Physical appearance counts a lot for us teenagers. It's really easy to say you don't care what they look like online, then finally meet them irl and change your mind. Beware the guy (or girl) that has 'tecnical difficulties' sending you a picture. It's easy leaving an online relationship in favor of a more promising irl one. I met both mine in an free form RPG chat.
No need to trash-talk those who haven't quite figured it all out yet. Otherwise, right on - people gotta get out there, stick their neck out if that's what it takes, go get what they deserve. Also figure out what you want to be, and be it. (If you can't figure it out, experiment. Let experiments be dangerous and even catastrophic, too.) If it turns out you do find yourself to be boring, mix things up - figure out what box you're stuck inside and think outside of it. In my experience, limiting yourself and/or being somewhat self-repressed doesn't -only- hold you back, but it also builds up potential - you can take advantage of this potential by breaking down some of those old barriers. Jaa ne, ---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
"If you're interested in someone, propositioning them for cybersex just isn't going to get you anywhere except a long term relationship with spanky and his five friends."
My buddy at work is always using AOL chat. Trying to sell me on it he made me a screen name. So I manage to get into a conversation with some girl and it goes sonething like;
(me):Hi
loosegrrl6969:Wanna Cyber?
(me):cyber???
loosegrrl6969:Yeah, like cybersex
(me):I like cars.
loosegrrl6969:c'mon CYBER
(me):ok
loosegrrl9669:What do you want to do to me?
(me):I have a really big...
(pause)
loosegrll6969:WHAT?????
(me):How do I make letters smaller?
loosegrrl6969:Oh.
(me):{H1}HEY THIS IS HUGE{/h1}
loosegrrl6969:You playing with me???
(me): What do you mean?
loosegrrl6969:DO YOU WANT TO CYBER?
(me):sure
(me):My cat's breath smells like cat food.
Really not too much of a point here, other than you go onto any popular chat room and look for intelligent conversation maybe like going to a bar and looking for intelligent conversation. BTW I had AOL-grrl going for like 10 minutes without ever giving her "CYBER". Oh, and those pictures they IM you on AOL chat are really from softcore pr0n newsgroups, usually the pictures from a long series where the 'barely legal' girl is just starting to unbutton something....I know you all figured this out already but it took me pointing out that ATK means amatuer teen kingdom, and then emailing my friend the rest of the series.
Met my wife online. Chatting we found we had a lot in common. Started seeing eachother and ended up married! The thing is you gotta move from the Cyber-realm into the real-life, that can be tricky but if your partner is right, it will work!
I never thought about this or considered it before. Is this a regional thing? When I unlock my car door for a woman I think I send a clear message, "You may enter the car rather than meeting me there by foot". If she leans over and unlocks the door for me it means, "I'm sick of watching you fumble with your keys."
-Kyriani, aka Rainah, aka The K'i-rin
Hold on, why is having a gf so important? I'd get far more done if I didn't waste so much of my time on women. I quite envy my friend Martin, who has never had a gf and has no interest in one atm. He gets so much time to do cool stuff. He also has no idea of the heartaches these relationships can cause. He'll meet someone when the time is right for him. Until then, he isn't going to make himself miserable because he isn't obsessed with what the media tell him he should be obsessed with.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I did a similar thing a couple weeks ago, only in my case she answered and I actually asked her out before I found out she had a boyfriend. It sure made the class I have with her feel pretty weird from then on...
The one thing I find to help smooth the wrinkles after a rejection is, and this is important, do not LOOK or SOUND hurt. Just be like,"Oh, I didn't realize you were seeing someone", shrug and make like it's no big deal. The last thing you want is that look, the "awwwwwww, poor guy" look. That means the end of anything normal with that girl ever again.
Remember these are just my personal opinion that I have observed myself, they may not ( will not ) agree with anyone elses.
I've been reading though the comments on this article and it sounds like the majority of people have had success with online romances. I congrat all the lucky people out there. Though most of us who have had bad experiences with online romances keep quiet about it due to embarassing circumstances.
I've never had a relationship with a woman outside of the internet. ( Not to say I haven't met women off the internet and proceeded with a relationship with them in real life. There was one, but I'll get to that later. )
I run my own IRC network, a small network dedicated to anime ( though the conversations rarly touch the subject ). Generally a comfortable atmosphere for people to just talk and have fun. I don't imagine that allot of Cybersex goes on around the IRC network, though I don't monitor it. ( I believe that everyone deserves their privacy. )
People are allot more trusting online even though everyone is pretty much anonymous. Women who spend time online chatting allot seem to very easily give up their phone numbers so that they can talk to someone on the phone. This is a bad idea as I've seen women getting totally harassed by a guy who they thaught was nice online, but then started to constantly calling them.
Heh, even in my bad luck. What most guys have feared has happened to me. I talked to this person online who said that she was a woman in real life, but then later I found out that she was a guy and was planning a sex change in 2 years. This was really awkward, and I just couldn't work it out. In my mind, I was in a relationship with another guy (even though he was scheduled for a sex change, things might have been different if they already had it done.) I think he was honest and everything, and was going to go though with the operation. But it was all too weird, recieving a valentine from him and talking to him on the phone.
Other things I've encountered online are women that that are swayed too easily, they have a new boyfriend every other week. I've been a horrible victim of this too all too often. I had known her for about a year and a half before I finally told her that I was interested. We talked on the phone many, many times and visited eachother once a year. This relationship went off and on for 2 years, we she broke off the relationship 3 or 4 times ( most times not even telling me, just cut all communications with me and my finding that she's off with another bf. ) Yeah, I'm stupid for continuing to get back together with her, but I just couldn't help myself. I was very interested in her. ( No, I didn't stalk her or anything )
Anyway, it's been 2-3 years since that relationship with her and it is still difficult to think about it. I've not had a relationship since then. I'm over it, I just have no-where else to look since I have given up on the idea of online romances. ( I'm not a total introvert, I go to the bar once and a while. Though I don't believe that I'd find a girl that I'm interested in there either. )
Online romances don't seem all that bad as there are many couples on the server to that have had very successful relationships happen. But some of us are just not smooth talkers. ( I spend most of the time just watching the channel scroll. I'm not the type of person to message a woman online because I imagine that there's already a bunch of guys already talking to her, and she dosen't need another. ) But oh well...
I think it's best not to look for love online, rather look for friendship.
--
Keiichi/Happosai on a small irc network
PS - I'm not great with writing in general, so please be nice about any grammar or spelling errors that you encountered. I just hope that I get my message across.
That seems to be the general advantage.....
And she was dog ruff. She looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp. :-(
Let's see, I met my fiance on a MUSH about four years ago. We've been together for three and a half of those years, engaged for two, and she just moved up to where I am four weeks ago. We are blissfully happy.
:)
Also, my mother met someone on a Yahoo chat room a couple years back and flew down to Florida to be with her after a few weeks of online chatting and phone calls. They've been together ever since and are happily committed.
Sure, there are complications to online romance, but there are complications to all romance. You just need to be honest and persistant.
Eric
Then they'd send email accepting, and I'd have to work really hard just to remember their name
No! I mean from the bash prompt, silly!
(I wager a psychosis of some kind on her end, but we won't get into that today).
'Psycho' relationships are rarely the responsibility of one partner alone. Not to say that this is never the case, but the overall tone of your post indicates to me that you tend to be a bit of a blamer. The fact that you're no longer on speaking terms with virtually any of your past amores says very little for your communication skills and/or compassion. This is how it looks to an outsider. To you, it most likely looks like "They were all psychos. They were unreasonable. They lied to me., etc., etc.".
I choose my words carefully, and when people divine implied meanings that simply aren't there and act upon them without consulting me in a reasonable fashion.
'Consulting', eh? Wow. Talk about bringing your work home with you! Try to remember that when you're dealing with women, you're dealing with people. People are designed to draw conclusions from minimal amounts of data. In most cases it saves time and is convenient; in other cases, signals get crossed, toes get stomped on and people get pissed. Welcome to the real world. Life happens.
Most females I've met who had romantic potential lied to me or decieved me in some way. They were dispensed with with exceptional expedience.
Alas and woe for the poor, honorable victim. I, personally, have *NEVER* been in a relationship which did not (and does not) occasionally involve some amount of deceit on one side or the other. What matters most to me is what drives such things. If my girlfriend chooses to decieve me about something, I generally trust her judgement. I'm probably better off not knowing! In all seriousness, tho', the less you worry about being decieved, the less likely it is that anyone will even bother to try.
If you let something as basic as a human relationship ride on a 'digital' commandment (ie: "if you lie to me, prepare to fuck off") prepare for a LONG and LONELY ride to the grave. You'll have no-one and no-thing but your iron-fisted 'integrity' to keep you warm at night. For some, perhaps, that is enough. Not for me. I like the squishy stuff.
Being honest and direct is a Good Thing.
Except when it ain't. Real life and True Love are awash with contradictions. Goofy or what!?
Gambatte, ne?
-kent
**>>BELCH
Later, he flew to Vancouver to meet her in real life for a few times. Even though they had quite a few ups and downs, they are still together. Now she's going to a university close enough to Toronto that she stays at his place over the weekend (although their intimate behaviour in front of everyone is making my granny shakes head--we're Chinese Canadian, and family tend to have tighter control than our white neighbour.)
One of the reason his mom didn't stop him early on was, they later find out the girl's parent was a co-worker of her, so she felt (or rather, had higher hopes) the girl is "safe" enough for her precious son.
As for myself, I'm a com sci major and my bf is com eng major. We met when we were still in high school, in a situation where many find not very romantic--a one-week invitational seminar on mathematics. He was (and still is) a math geek, while I decided to go just to skip school. ;) He respect my intelligence (well, at least I was good enough to be invited, he thought, so I would be pretty hard working--which turned out to be a dead wrong assumption), and don't mind me turning into a computer geek. Since we're physically apart fairly often, email and ICQ became a very important part of our relationship when we don't see each other. The internet works really well also, partly because I'm so attached to my computer. =)
I think the main point is, just treat the internet as yet another medium, not the only way, to start and maintain a relationship. However, getting in touch with the person in some other form, preferrably in real life, is alway better.
i don't honestly know if i could "fall in love" on the net... but something unexpected definitely happened.
:) )
i tried IRC a few times about 5 years ago and didn't like it at all. i tried something called a MUD that a friend told me about (i'm a big fan of roleplaying) and over the span of almost 2 complete years i met a guy on there. i no longer play on there and he doesn't either and we're gotten very close. meeting up is in the works but that's not what i wanted to talk about.
just last year i would not have believed that i'd meet someone online. i've had 2 pseudo-serious RL boyfriends in my life and both crashed and burned. thinking back on those relationships, i can't even recall being as happy talking to them as i am with this guy. as for cybersex.. who has time for that when you're constantly talking about geek or non-geek things that you both equally enjoy. this might seem like a dumb thing to say, but i don't think i would have ever met a guy like him offline unless i went searching in bookstores for cute guys or something.
btw, my best friend made a really rude comment to me quite a while ago (which she's since apologized for).. she said, "you're not fat and ugly, so why don't find a real guy?" first of all, i don't like using either of those words to describe *anyone*, but i won't rant about that now. i just thought it was a horrible thing to say and i'm wondering where the heck she could have gotten that idea from.
so anyway, i just wanted to pipe in and say that it's really neat to see all the positive stories about relationships like these that have worked. i would love for my relationship with this person to grow, but at the same time i'm not going to become possessive and go crazy if he happens to go out with friends where he lives. but either way, i will always have the memory of the amazing intellectual and sometimes hilarious conversations that i've had with this person and how things i've learned from them has helped me to grow as a person. is online romance good or evil? i don't think that question can be answered for everyone. if you're stressed or obsessing over someone online (i've seen that happen with fellow students), then it's definitely evil.. otherwise i think it just depends on how you handle it.
(this is my very first slashdot post/reply after reading it for almost a year now... i'm usually scared for anyone to see my dumb opinion
-- If there's been a way to build it, There'll be a way to destroy it, Things are not all that out of control. - Ste
I'm with you dude. "Let's just be friends" seems to happen all too often, even though the signals are pretty clearly in the direction of "Let's be MORE than friends". Whatever.
I have had a medium-term relationship (2 years), so I'm not completely oblivious to what works with women, but it still can be difficult. That relationship just sort of "happened" out of mutual interest... most of the women I meet lately are "just friends" or already with someone..
There's a pretty decent book called "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", that explains that the "you're such a nice guy, let's just be friends" syndrome seems to happen because Men like to jump steps in the "relationship game". What I mean is this: if you give signals that you've got a major crush on a girl when she just likes you as a friend, chances are she won't be interested, and may get frightened off. That doesn't mean that she couldn't _potentially_ be hot for you - if she didn't have an immediate crush on you then it usually takes a while, since women are like ovens... they start liking you mentally & emotionally first, and then if that reaches a peak, they'll start becoming physically attracted. So, if you make your advances gradually by like aiming at her "stage" of what she thinks of you, it may work out better....
Unfortunately, that plan doesn't help when deep down you're tearing yourself apart with anxiety & impatience because you're majorly infatuated wtih this girl... My own thoughts on this matter are: women can smell discomfort & lack of confidence as well as dogs can smell a T-bone. Women dig confidence - and it has to be genuine. That means resisting the urge to have huge crushes, which usually are more destructive than anything 'cause they turn you into a blubbering idiot [i've been there, recently too]. Only solution here is to stop communicating for a while.. it's a harsh solution, and it's hard to manage it while maintaining a real friendship, but it WILL numb your crush after a few weeks.
Life is always an ongoing journey anyway, so if we had all the answers, it wouldn't be as much fun.. yea that sounds hokey, but it's true. just keep learning & things tend to work out...
-Stu
There is only one thing I can say. Without the experiences I've had online (especially IRC), I wouldn't be who I am today. This is largely in part to the online relationships I've had. Since everyone is laying out their stories here, I'll take my turn to toss in my two cents into the jar.
The first serious relationship I ever had was during my junior year in high school. Not too surprisingly enough, it was online. One evening when I was goofing off on IRC, a friend of mine messaged me, and asked me if I would message this person and find out who it was. I later figured out that he was trying to see if it was this girl he was chasing, but it wasn't. Anyway, I messaged her, and we got to talking. It was interesting to see how alike we were. We got along great. We started talking regularly, which eventually turned into "whenever we could". There were several phone calls, letters, pictures, and tapes of music sent back and forth over a period of time. Our conversations became more deep, more personal, and one night when we were talking on the phone, I admitted how I felt. Her reaction was somewhat similar. We were inseparable after that. We talked all the time, I was always thinking of sweet things to do for her, to show her that my love was real.
The one thing that I'll never forget was what she did for me not long after my birthday. I had written her a poem, and she loved it, but she was feeling bad because she really didn't go out and do things like that for me. Well, what she did do was this. She sent me an mp3 - it had some strange name - and told me to get a pair of headphones. Well, I did, and after the mp3 was done downloading (gotta love them DCC downloads over a 28.8 modem), she told me when to start playing it. The song was "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers. Her words I'll never let escape my mind - "Love, Guy - to you - from 1100 miles away."
As all good things go, though, this one came to an end. When we were still friends, another one of her online friends had asked her to go to Prom with him. Since he was there before me, I didn't care, so I wished her well. I had the worst feeling, though. Turns out it wasn't too far off. She came home, and told me a story that sent me into depression for a long time. It took me forever to get over her - even now, a year and a half since it ended, I still hurt. That's how I knew I was in love with her.
Those experiences taught me a lot about relationships that I easily applied to real life settings. My once non-existant social life began to perk up. I was making friends more easily. I was able to talk to people I didn't know. Best of all, when I walked up to a girl to start something, I knew what to say. And it worked. I've had several relationships in person since. Even though most of them sucked, there were a few special ones I'll never forget.
Don't miscount what you learn online when it comes to real life. My time online (five and a half years so far) has taught me so much about life, and how to deal with people. Take the experiences you have - good as well as bad - and keep them close to your heart, because the experience will help you in some way in the future as you search to find The One.
(Spock's voice):
Fascinating.
Here we have the computer. The medium that science says - one day, will replace the human mind, proving that there is no divine spark, no soul, that humans are simply biological machines.
And that these biological machines are slaves to the laws of chemistry and physics. I've even heard it said that what we call romantic "love", is a biochemical play between two animals of the same species (hopefully), and that when one finds attraction to another, it's because of chemical signals in our brains and glands.
Yet, these two people fell in love - through nothing more than the exchange of information over a computer network. No organic molecules. No scents. No hormones.
What if, you had met IRL, and found out this person was lying, and was a man? (well, the lying part would probably kill the love right there). Or what if this person had been fugly? Or smelled funny? You say the love happened BEFORE the F2F.
Well, words, just thoughts, ideas alone did it.
Call me a romantic.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So.. .. .. 18 year old internet boyfriend. And no.. this wasn't just some guy i was 'dating' over the web. We had been 'going out' for .. 2 years prior to meeting. This happened very oddly in that he flew here, to missouri, all the way from Sydney, Australia. He spent 2 weeks here, which were 2 of the happiest weeks of my life. Then he left. Just like that.. and things were NEVER the same. He became insanely jelouse and manipulative, reading my email, pretending to be me, breaking into my computer (which wasn't had since he was better at linux than i was at the time) ... anyway. So there's two sides. It was great while it lasted, but it was almost unbearable when we couldn't be together. ...
this is the subject, eh?
Well, i must admit that i have a bit of insight on this
When i was 15 i met my
the ending? Well.. im 16 now. A year wiser maybe, maybe a few years wiser. Heh. It came to the point where i had to terminate all contact with him, to at least save part of our sanity. its been over 5 months since *I* last had contact, dispite the fact he contacts me every day.. So where am i? Miserable? Not quite.. Would i do it again, in a heartbeat. but perhaps i would be more cautcious about how i regarded the online aspect
that oh so young linux Chick.
Yui
eak. .. two geeks can be too much alike
not to mention, having 2 geeks in a relationship isn't always great.. I always found myself fighting either for computer time or the attention of the sig. other who was on the computer. And this wasn't me just being some stupid female and overreacting because my bf wasn't paying enough attention to me.. it seriously becomes a problem. Perhaps
Personally, the best feeling in the world is the warm touch of another.
I have a big bag full of two cents and I'm coming your way.
I used to hang out at a friend's Internet Cafe, where I kept the FreeBSD servers ticking along in exchange for free drinks. This was in Cape Town, South Africa. As a consequence, I got to meet a lot of foreign women who were on vacation and used to come in to send e-mail back home. I met my wife there, who was visiting from New York. And she isn't a geek, but a personal trainer (she's a babe and she's got brains and tons of personality to boot). So, maybe some of you can follow my example - Internet Cafe's are great places to meet people, and you are in a strong position, 'cos you can help any damsels in distress!
I was _very_ lucky in general meeting my husband. He came with references from dear friends, was a sysadmin like me, and had time on his hands. I met him in person (but didn't talk), then spent 3 days straight on-line. That job afforded me time in spurts to do nothing productive. The relationship was cemented though by RL time. You can't take what people say on ICQ as face-time, I'm sorry! I ended up moving to his town to a better paying job, but the on-line time is less. This may sound pathetic, but I miss the time on-line! :) Hard to get all the outrageous comments when you talk face to face... *blush* But the great sex makes up for it! *eye twinkle*
They're all petrified when they see the size of my mammoth johnson.
On the other hand, my ex-girlfriend (who I originally met over the Net, but that's another story) lives in Oklahoma in the USA, and is now engaged to a man from South Africa whom she met thru the Net... They're currently in the process of getting a visa so he can move to the US.
Lemmi think... Actually, you are confirming what I already said..