I think, therefore IM.

[mwittier]

Do you like to eavesdrop on others' conversations, read others' mail? Are you alive? Are you something more than comatose at least? Then yes, you do. If you say no, you are either lying, or only inadvertantly following the linty balloon with your eyes while your mom videotapes it for the trial. Or for Diane Sawyer.

Comments

[tinaguppie]

In early 2000, I used to be kind of obsessed with an AOL "books" chat room. I lived in a rambling 70's A-frame rental house in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado. Every night, I came home from my receptionist job (at a software start up) and holed up in an empty bedroom of the house and talked to strangers on the internet about books. I shared the house with my rich hippie pot dealing boyfriend and his childhood best friend. By mid 2000, my relationship with both housemates had fully deteriorated. Weird as it seems, having a chatroom to escape to in the evenings when I was stuck in that house helped me stay sane. I eventually dumped the stoned hippie, moved into my own studio apartment, the chatroom became filled with stupid teenagers and I made a few friends from work to do stuff with in the evenings. Anyway, I don't really have a point, except that the internets maybe SAVED MY LIFE!

So do you really have red hair?

[mwittier]

AOL really was something different at one time. Briefly, anyhow.

I don't have red hair. You know how you weirdly get an image of how someone looks when you 'talk' with them online, and often, even after you've seen a (fuzzy, chosen-for-flattery .jpg) photo of them, you still insist on imagining they look like your original concept of them? Well that's what that was about. R pictured me a having red hair, and nothing would convince him otherwise. After I'd met him down in Houston, while visiting Brian, he emailed me when I'd returned to Minneapolis and told me that when we talked online, I still had red hair as far as he was concerned. He couldn't undo it.

Even more than seeing portraits of people with whom I was typing, I used to obsess with seeing images of the room they typically typed in; what they were looking at when they talked to me. For some odd reason, this always seemed more important to me.

'Course I don't know anyone with a Humvee. But still.

[mwittier]

I know. Anytime I re-read any old correspondence, or something like this, I am grateful that no one has backed over my head with a Humvee yet.

O adored adverbial one.

[quuf]

Back in 1996 -- I think -- I saw the New Year in with friends who were scattered across the country; there were a good dozen of us, and we were all on IRC. It was an almost transcendent experience chatting with Tim in small-town Pennsylvania, then having Jim chime in from Las Vegas, with periodic appearances from Teresa, who was hosting a real time party in St. Louis, then Clare in Boston, who'd just returned from the fireworks show on the Charles, then Dave . . .

I was so bewitched by the experience that I actually wrote to the inventor of IRC and told him about the online party. He wrote me a lovely email in response.

And yet . . . after those five uninterrupted hours of typing witty ripostes, and LOLs, and early-adapter emoticons, I had no desire to revisit online chat, ever. It was something I could say I did, and did under the best possible circumstances.

But I'm glad you kept it up, or I would have missed out on this.

[mwittier]

I was briefly IRC-enamored, but the interface was so uggo at the time, I couldn't deal with it for long. Somehow, I'd never have imagined you being happy typing conversationally, not even briefly

[quuf]

I was online the night with all of my "e-friends" the night they shut it down at midnight. It was really sad, in all contexts of that word.

How awful. I would have been grieving for months.

[mwittier]

Do you mock me, Sir? I said, SIR: DO YOU MOCK ME?

[kristenlou]

I am masculine enough to make a souffle rise just by looking at it sternly.
*snort*

Ooh, I just got a chance to read this and it made me very very happy. And also kind of sad, as it reminds me of an email correspondance I used to have with a friend back about five or six years ago, all innundo, witty repartee and song lyrics.

And speaking of song lyrics, I really liked Little Voice. (At that point I had never seen AbFab, and had only ever seen Jane in an old episode of Red Dwarf.) I thought she did a bang-up job, and little Ewan and his McGregor are always pleasant to look at as well.

[mwittier]

You know, I'd forgotten E McG was in Little Voice. I'd forgotten all about Little Voice, truthfully: I had to stare at the ceiling for a good twenty seconds (too stubborn to imdb it) until I recalled what we were even blathering about. Here's my thing about Ewan: I like him just fine, and think he's done some charming work, but his teeth always seem happier than the rest of him. There are people that I can just instantly look at and imagine what their naked skull would look like, and he's one of them. John Lithgow's another; so is Kevin Bacon. Maybe there's a pill for me, I dunno. In a similar way, I think Kim Basinger acts excessively with her hair. She's a hair actress.

Isn't it weird though (ABRUPT TOPIC SHIFT) that it's possible to not only keep, but to catalogue old, winning conversations? Do you think God (God of the Children's Illustrated Bible Stories in the pediatrician's waiting room) intended it? I doubt it, I do. I think that stuff is supposed to dissolve over time, like leaf mold, last only a brain season, you know? I

[blank_verse]

I was learning how to type in 1997, and discovered IRC that year. But I hadn't had sex until 1999.

when both of us were negatively charged like bad attitude carpet static with anticipatory work dread.

I love how you worded that.

[mwittier]

I still haven't learned to type, and I was having sex (albeit against my will, and in a cornfield behind the school, and I lost my lunchbox and cried afterward) in 1969.

I don't trust anyone who can be carefree or chirpy on Sunday nights. Evil Work Bastards.

[blank_verse]

Oh, that must've been scary. :(

But I really loved that lunchbox.

[mwittier]

I got used to it.