Chat a chat chat

So, I’ve been stuck in bed with food poisoning and unable to do anything new for my blog, which has been a bummer. My brain is functioning way better today than it has so far, and therefore, I decided to come up with something immobile to do, with the help of the internet. My initial goal was very broad, to “help someone” or “give advice” which I decided I would do through internet chat. I have only been in chat rooms once as a curious teenager and quickly found them to be creepy and left, but I thought if I went to an adult one it might be okay… famous last words.

My first mistake was clicking on the first one that came up under my search for “chat rooms” I logged in as “livelife” and off we went. My initial response: EVERYTHING IS GOING TOO FAST! There were different coloured words scrolling past my screen way faster than I could read it. I decided to jump in and meet my fellow chatters… but I realized that they all had little pictures next to their names and I only had a question mark. I tried to look for a picture button and instantly felt like a very old lady or a monkey trying to use a computer for the first time. I found my profile, and realized they had all chosen “avatars” okay, cool… some of them were a little slutty… I avoided those and went for a picture of a girl who kind of looked like the girl with the pearl earring. Perfect.

Next I put out a “hello” to the room. No one responded.  I added a “What’s up?”

Still nothing. They were all going strong with weird conversations that I could not understand. And then some idiot started spamming the chat with this over and over again:

“Only beautiful girls can add me or pm me..I'm a model in a model agency for magazines,catalogs and photographers.If you don't believe me don't add me.”

I was pissed. I wrote “Sexymanforyou” a very angry “stop spamming, you idiot. If you were so attractive you wouldn’t feel so insecure as to write it all over the place.” Message.  He continued spamming as it is probably a robot of some kind doing it, but I like to feel that someone was touched by my intelligence.

After this I was suddenly slammed with private messages dinging in over and over again. I opened up 4 of them that just said “asl?” Now I am completely out of it, but I do remember from my middle school days that meant age/sex/location. I still think it is extremely rude to demand the question upon someone, so I responded to one of them with a “It is quite rude to demand that question of me. I would appreciate it if you kindly asked me where I am from and how old I am.” They responded with a smiley face symbol with red cheeks, so I obviously really got through to them.

I deleted most of the other ones as they said disgusting things like “wanna see my sexy body? PM me.” (Which means private message me for all of you who may be out of the loop.) I did respond to one inviting me to see a certain part of their anatomy be saying “No thank you. I am on here to meet new people and have a conversation. You are being rude and disgusting. “ He stopped messaging me.

I then got a very interesting message from guest. Obviously he hadn’t figured out how to change the name. It simply said. “Hi. How are you?” That was refreshing. I responded with “I am well thanks, and you?”  I conversation continued as follows:

Guest: Good.

Me: Good then!

Guest: How old are you?

Me: I’m… 23 (I felt I needed to lie for some reason), and how old are you?

Guest: 21.

Me: Cool.

Guest: Can you rate my picture?

Me: I’m sorry?

Guest: Rate my picture. My face.

Me: You want me to rate a picture of your face?

Guest: I want to know If I look good.

 (Okay, I thought, this is someone that maybe I can help.)

 Me: What do you think?

Guest: What?

Me: Do you like your face?

Guest: Can you look at my pic?

Me: Why does it matter what a stranger thinks of your face?

Guest: I just wanna know! Can you tell me?

Me: I’m not going to rate your face.

Guest: I’m not 21.

Me: What? Okay.

Guest: I’m 14.

Me: Ok.

(I started wondering if I was going to be arrested by some kind of teen government co-op thingy…I decided I should finish the conversation, and not just leave.)

Guest: I’m not 21.

Me: Right, okay.  I’m going to go. Bye.

Guest: Can you just look at my picture?

Me: Listen, if you depend on other people to tell you how you look, life is going to be really hard. Learn to like what you look like. It makes it easier.

Guest: Please!

At that point I signed out. I hope that little boy thinks about the words I said and maybe, just maybe tries to listen to them.

What he said really struck me. I remember hearing about a fad going around where teens would videotape themselves and then post it and have people comment on how attractive they are. It was gross since people were mean on purpose due to the fact that they can comment anonymously. I decided to google “am I attractive” and see what came up.

What came up was a ton of sites with people asking that question. One that really interested me was a man with autism who was asking people to rate how attractive he was so that he would know what level of attractive girls he could try to date. Now, I know enough about autism (from the ol’ psychology degree days) to remember that this makes perfect sense as something that would be observed in other couples and therefore seem completely reasonable to ask. When I see the question being asked I think it is absurd. Is it?

When I really think about it, I know I write people off all of the time because I assume that they are too attractive for me. I don’t think I do it completely consciously, but I think that I do it. I’m not saying I think highly or lowly of myself, I think that it might be one of those human instincts that just kind of happens. It is so weird to pull it out and look at it though.

Now all of that said, I will be the first to tell you that my attraction generally does not come from looks so much as personality. Of course, I need to find something physically attractive about a person, but I am not extremely picky. I am more picky about many other personality factors and morals. I think there are a lot of people who feel this way. I decided to try round two of internet research to find out.

This time I decided to be pickier and choose a chat room that would be less chaotic. I decided on a movie lovers chat room. It was much less busy, in the way that no one was talking on it. I decided to break the ice:

“Ols” Oh shoot, I meant to say ola. Blew it. But wait! Someone named Jazur responded with a “Hi raisins”

(I should explain that I had chosen my name to be raisincouncil as in the quote from benny and joon “I can’t say I’m a big supporter of the raisin council.” Haha, anyway…)

So I chatted with Jazur, angel34, gorutsy and gabon about their favorite movies and then dropped this little puppy:

“Question: Off topic: If you could only pick ONE thing in a partner out of beauty, extreme intelligence or a great sense of humour, what would it be? ;)”

I only got one response, it was humour. Now keep in mind it was Jazur who answered  and then started asking me my answer (which of course was humour too) where I was from and my gender, so I’m pretty sure he was trying to pick me up until I told him I was Male. He then he asked me what actors I was attracted to.

I instantly said Kate Winslet, and then realized that she is beautiful and I just ruined my point. So I left. I have to say that I don't just love Kate because she is beautiful, but because she is a fantastic actor. I don't really care how beautiful she is. But that is hard to explain in a chat room when I am pretending to be a man.

So my research didn’t go exactly as planned, and I didn’t prove any points, but it really got me thinking about how much we really do judge how attractive we are. I am going to leave this entry at this:

The older I grow, the more I start to realize that what I desire most in a companion is a lovely, artistic, kind-hearted person. There are other things that I find work, and other things that don’t, but I don’t look for a supermodel by any means. I know I’m not alone in this, so why don’t we all make a pact to try to focus on being kind-hearted people more than perfectly attractive creatures. I think it will help with a lot of our troubles.

Love and kindness all.