whelkstall

We live in an existential world. I love the Jacques Tati film Trafic, and was, yesterday, reminded of the scene where our hero is walking down the road carrying a petrol can and sees the traffic gradually turn into a stream of petrol tankers. The punchline comes when he sees another person carrying a petrol can on the other side of the road, coming the other way.

 

I've just met my own petrol can carrier. Perfecting my tracing techniques prior to writing up a lesson and an article about Internet safety I traced a person in the dating chat room who didn't belong; a journalist coming the other way.

 

One thing I've noticed about these chat rooms is that confident people with a clear sense of purpose don't belong there, so meeting one had me intrigued. It took only a few minutes to discover who Dawn is – a high profile writer and journalist with a considerable and easily discovered Internet presence. I exchanged some niceties with her but she wasn't interested and clearly irritated at my apparent interest.

 

I assume that Dawn is right now writing an article about the sad people you meet in dating chat rooms. I wonder if I will get a starring role.

A couple of people who know me have asked what I was doing in a dating chat room. The simple answer was that I was working. It always alarms me that kids are very free with their personal details online. Bebo.com is full of pictures, real names and email addresses and no sense of vunerability at all.

 

So I posed the question:

 

How easy would it be for someone to find out where a person in a chat room lives?

 

A dating chat room seemed appropriate because I could ensure that I was looking at adults and it occurs to me that anything with a hint of sexuality is likely to be a focus for somebody's obsession.

 

The answer to my question is, extremely easily. I have no intention of explaining, here, how it is done, but suffice to say that I was able to discover several anonymous posters' real names, addresses and telephone numbers and in some cases their place of work.

 

This is potentially quite scary. I can locate a lonely elderly person living alone. I can find single mums. Perhaps I might find a man or woman cheating on their partner. What makes it even more scary is that they have no idea that I have done it.

 

I have the feeling that being able to show that I can find out about a person from my computer would provide quite a dramatic lesson, but showing kids how to do it would be irresponsible in the extreme.

 

The point is that the Internet is not a place where you can easily hide. If someone targets you there is a good chance they can find you.

Amongst the spam I get in my email, I came across one that advertised free dating and curiosity got the better of me. What is it all about?

 

It's another chat room. The login screen give you pictures of some of the available men and women and the ability to read the profiles of people currently on line. I signed up with an honest account of myself, but struggled to find a picture. Being as photogenic as a bath plug I avoid being snapped and eventually, I had to crop one from a group photo.

 

The main feeling I get from viewing this site is one of sadness. I visited it quite a few times during a long weekend and realised that it was mostly the same people. Some seemed very positive. Many were angry and seemed seriously screwed up. “ONLY SINGLE HONEST MEN NEED REPLY,” shouted at me from the screen left me wondering who would actually reply and how the person would know that they were single and honest. You can say anything in a chat room and if you are consistent you are unlikely to be caught out.

 

I came across a teacher I had worked with and I wonder why she feels the need to promote herself in this way. Her profile is of the nice person I know and I find it hard to believe that she needs to advertise. It's very strange. She probably couldn't ask someone she knows for an evening out, but putting herself on the market for strangers to gawp at doesn't seem to be a problem. If I work with her again and embarrassment doesn't get the better of either of us, who knows?

 

I chatted with a few of the women on line. Most of them were appallingly unpleasant, being rude and uncomplimentary. I suppose that makes it clear where they stand, but why be horrid to strangers. One woman offered me “half an hour for £62” above a charity shop in Lutterworth. Why £62 I asked myself. Does it include VAT or something? And I'd have to drive all the way to Lutterworth. The drive would be longer than the 'business'.

 

I recall my only experience with a lady of the evening. I was in Cyprus with the army, listening to static on the radio, hoping to find some intelligence and rapidly losing my own. It was actually a boring place and everyone found their way to the local bars in the evening, mostly drinking and chatting and more with the local bar girls.

 

One girl came over to talk to me and with a lot of prompting from the drunken crowd I was with I agreed to go with her. I must have been her fifth that evening. She took me to a squalid room, took £2.50 from me and undressed. At that point I was really scared and also realised that the very last thing I wanted was what she had on offer. I rushed to the loo and repeatedly threw up. She'd seen it all before. Soldiers regularly paid to throw up in her loo. In future, if I feel the need to throw up, I'll just put my fingers down my throat. £62 seems a high price to pay.

 

I'm afraid that for me, the chat room, with its blurred 100 X 100 pixel pictures reminds me too much of the Amsterdam street market I've seen on TV.

 

But I digress.

 

Relationships need to be worked at and I believe that can only happen if you are in an honest one to one situation. Trying to maintain a conversation with someone who may well be chatting to several others at the same time doesn't work for me. I'm also not sure how I'd feel at the prospect of dating someone, suspecting that they were back on line looking for tomorrow's conquest when that date had ended.

 

I chatted to two nice people on line that I would probably value a relationship with, and not necessarily romantic. Maybe that reflects the usual rate of attraction between people, I don't know.

 

What do people talk about? I really don't know. You tell them how pretty/handsome their 1000 pixels looks and maybe you mean it. I personally, wouldn't say it for the sake of it. Saying the same stuff about yourself over and over again seems quite dull too. The sorts of things I want to say to someone I cared about seem utterly inappropriate for a chat room. It seems very like the sort of chat room things you see kids writing when they should be working. Trivial, smutty, petty and pretty much worthless. I prefer to communicate having thought about it, but that takes time and investment. Is that today's world?

 

So I've done and dusted another experience. I'll look forward to giving KAZM a knowing look next term and maybe chat to her for real (and almost certainly about Wayne's behaviour).

 

My favourite film is Bedazzled with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The chat room seems just like Stanley Moon's quest for love and his belief that he needs to be someone else to find it. "Love me," he pleads in song, only to be outdone by the devil's hard to get response, "I'm unavailable". At the end he has to admit, “All I want is to be myself.” “But you can't be that without your soul,” says the Devil.

 

I feel that I would have to leave my 'soul' behind to participate. That's even more expensive than £62.