2001-04-02 - 10:28 a.m.

well, here i am... my first online diary entry.

i consider myself an internet kid, so it seems fitting my diary be a digital one. what brings me to the net anyhow? my first experience was with AOHell and i remember spending endless hours in chat rooms. it amazed me that people could be so open and honest (or in some cases totally fronting some fake persona) and get into intense friendships in such short amounts of time. i made quite a few friends some of which extended beyond the virtual realm. the first time you meet someone in person who you've shared very intimate bits of yourself with is quite awkward. we're not raised to be as open and honest as we often are on the internet, and it can sometimes be scary realizing that your private mind although seemingly anonymous in virtual reality can be physically touched and actualized in real live relationships.

it's not so odd now... and i've learned to sacrifice my privacy. i try to be as open and honest now in real life as i am here, online... and that's actually something you have to learn to do. it makes the move from virtual to physical relationships much easier, that's for sure. for instance, i found this place by following a link a friend of mine has in her profile on a message board. she's my newest real life friend, but i knew her first from the message board. we met at a gathering in new orleans last month for an absinthe tasting which was organized via the board. since then, we've moved from message board to email to phone calls to hanging out. just this last weekend, we went out for a picnic (with the admin of the board as well) and checked out a Tolousse Latrec exhibit in the City.

if i had a "ten best friends ever" list, probably four of the people on there would have started out as anonymous usernames in some chatroom or message board... not neighborhood buds or old classmates... some of which i never came within several hundred miles of... the world is indeed getting smaller in a societal sense.