Who are all these people online?
What are they doing online, social networking, business marketing, scamming or spamming, scholarly research, playing games, making laws, breaking laws.
Where are these internet posters living? Is there a difference on why and how they communicate or has globalness, the net, 24-7 news really shrunk the world?
When do people decide to dip their virtual toes in the web surf? When are they online?
Why are people living in the fantasy world of the internet at all?
How does the net bring people together, pull people apart, fuel peace, fuel war?
Millions more questions. Some answered. Some still to be answered. ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| Your real identity ends and your virtual identity begins the nanosecond you log onto your favorite Internet site under your nic(k) name. Your fantasy begins. Your reality washes away. The nanomoment you move from life's reality beach, dipping your toe in the web's surf, you become a virtual being, and so is everyone else you are typing to (and you thought you were chatting). You exist there when you want. When you walk away from the computer, all those people in that virtual world go poof – gone – until you log back in. You hang out on your favorite webpage, blog, chatroom, networking site, game room, or where ever else you go to get away from your life. The Internet is the only place where multiple personalities are encouraged. Your mind leaves your physical surroundings and your persona takes over. You are anyone you ever wanted to be since no one can see the real you. Today maybe you're an old man, tomorrow a Hell's Angel, next week a hot teenage girl. You are old, young, a gazillionaire, famous, infamous, or soon to be infamous. Maybe chatting online is the only place you actually feel normal. No one knows who you are or the reality of your life. You don't even know if you're flirting with your neighbor, who in real life you hate. The social rules of how you are supposed to communicate in the real world stay in your physical life. Everyday manners stop at the keyboard. YOU CAN TURN ON THE CAP KEY AND FLAME AWAY. You can type insults until your fingers are too calloused to curse anymore. You can lie, cheat, ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| You sit at your computer, and enter a chat room. The room you are in, the chair you sit on, the computer you type on all disappear. You have entered the virtual word, where you live in your head totally, while reflecting to those you type with your inner world, and you glimpse at theirs. You believe you are in a room, the room that only exists in computers connecting, fingers typing, joined to people thinking, responding, sipping a drink in real time and webtime. The minute you enter into cyberland, your computer morphs into a puter, and you start talking in net-talk, which is only understood in cyberland. You even typespeak as if you are really in a room. "Come join in the corner" you may write. If you are really adventurous you might even go into "private" and while you type with one hand and pleasure yourself with the other hand, you believe in your mind that you are making love with a stranger a world away, really. But you both disappear when the puter is turned off, though you may still be turned on. As you move through the day in your real life, your cyberlife seeps in, and you recall your experiences with people you may never meet in a real room. That room you are in, where the computer sits on a table or your lap gets swallowed up by webtime. You spend hours online, but it seems like less time than that. Before you know it, the earth has turned far enough around for the sun to rise again. Before you know it, maybe you gambled the rent money away, or stole someone's identity, or had yours stolen. ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| When you go fishing the only harm done is to the fish you might fry up later for dinner. But when you are phished, you never know if you are the bait, the lure, or the catch. Phishers are not interested in the nutritional value of their catch, just the cash value. They're the ones who send you an email that you think is from a legit company, because they cut and paste the company's logo onto the email. You might be asked to either click onto a bogus link or actually send some info about you. Do that and the phisher's got you hook, line and sinking your identity. The phishing police are on the prowl, with virtual phisher wanted pages posted, because phishing to steal your identity is against lots of laws. Outside net-land, in the real world where there are real streets, phishers are the pickpockets. They might even send snail mail asking for your information, to be used by them for their snarky nefarious deeds. Picking pockets online is a lot easier. Phishers use the oldest form of web communication – email. Email is now used by those sneaky criminals for lots of ways to rob, steal, stalk and even kill. But phirst we have phishing. ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| So lets say Sexygrrrlll signs onto MySpace, or any social network site, and she decides (if she is really a she) to let everyone who asks if they can be her friend that they can be her friend. She lets sillyboi and krazybiatch, and funnybunny and all those crazed named internutters be her friend, and she will be their friend. So Sexygrrrlll puts on her profile that she is str8 (cyberspeak for straight), from Bumfyk IdaHo (ho get it), 21, and looking for friends. Her Myspace are of nekkid gay guys in their tidywhities. Sexygrrrlll even has a picture up that she claims is really really her. It must be, since she said it is. Right. Of course that has to be true, since all those Myspacers have all kinds of Krazy nics, and profiles. Myspace is not really a space anyway. It's a social networking site (all the experts say). It's a cyberspace space and that doesn't count as real. It's a fun place to go, forget your troubles, live your fantasy life, just like Sexygrrrlll. Hey WTF (that's cyberspeak for what the fuck). So who cares if Sexygrrrlll is not 21 and not a grrrlllll – but a dirty old sociopath. Hey what harm is that, if you don't meet up with the guy. You're having fun and he/she is having fun. It's not reality. Reality is when you actually have to deal with people in real life, in your family, at school, at work, at church. Reality is when you chat and actually speak to another person. The Internet is a fantasy, where chatting is typing, and chat rooms are all in ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| Fantasy crashes into reality because online space and time disappear. The room you're in fades behind you when you enter a chatroom. Time disappears as you play a game with people who sit in front of their computers a dozen time zones away from where you sit in front of your computer. Now time is a funny thing anyway. A couple of millennia ago, Julius Caesar decided to stop figuring out time by the light of the moon, and returned to figuring what time it was by the light of the sun, like Aristotle did. About a millennia and a half ago, Pope Gregory decided that, even though he didn't believe the earth revolved around the sun, to make up his own calendar, burning the Julian datebook, replacing it with the Gregorian calendar (with Greg's name and everything – what power). Now Pope G. didn't just want his name on the new calendar for prosperity and timeless eternity. He just wanted to know when to celebrate Easter, and with those pesky extra hours and days every four years, well he was in a conundrum. So, he made up how long it took for the sun's cycles to happen with snow, and spring flowers, and hot sticky summers, and autumnal leaves. So we are stuck with those 24-hour days, 365 days (Julius had the same number of days but not enough info for Pope G.). When Galileo wrote his outrageous theory that the earth revolved around the sun, and then recanted when he was threatened with death by the grand inquisitioners, Pope G's calendar was already being used for about 30 years, and the Julian calendar had ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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| Once upon a time, Lori Drew magically transformed into Queen SheWolf, defender of her cub, Sarah. The Queen decided to teach neighbor Princess Megan Meier, 14 a lesson for fighting with her SarahCub, also 14. Her lady-in-waiting, Ashley Grill, 18, gave the Queen a key to magical MySpaceLand. "Walk through the sorcerer's screen," Ashley told her, "and you will no longer be Lori Drew. You will become PrinceCharming, Josh Evans, 16, hunkylicious, and new in town. You'll be able to watch Princess Megan through Merlin's mirror, and see what she writes about SarahCub. I'll set everything up for you." Ashley wrapped the Queen in a sheepskin robe and helped her through the screen. Lori disappeared from RealLifeLand, diving head first off the deep end into the cybersurf. There she transformed into PrinceCharming Josh Evans. Queen SheWolf asked, "Merlin's mirror, what's that Princess saying now?" Princess Megan was not cooperating with Queen SheWolf's plan. She told SarahCub to gather all the other villagers to launch a cyberbullying attack on the Princess. Still the Queen was not satisfied. The Princess was not learning the lesson to not mess with her SarahCub quickly enough. Ashley suggested that PrinceCharming turn on the charming." Queen SheWolf agreed. Cloaked in her sheep's skin, with her lady-in-waiting and her SarahCub at her side, Queen SheWolf walked through the sorcerer's screen into MySpaceLand, transforming into Prince Josh, telling Princess Megan, "I really like you." Nothing is wrong with that, SheWolf told herself. Since Josh wasn't actually going to meet Princess Megan, SheWolf was just "grooming" – not the dastardly DirtyOldMan deed. Anyway, all SheWolf wanted to do was teach Princess Megan a lesson ... |
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| Posted by Jessica Naomi at | | | |
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