Like, Love and Lust Online
By Medusa of QgirlZ [Last Updated: 6/24/98] |
If you stare into your crystal ball enough, you will fall in love with far away lands and people. The difference is that the Net is more interactive – it’s a two way medium. Via the Net and online gaming you get interactions that can lead to personal relationships based on familiarity and more. In addition the Net is relatively new and a forum for a type of faceless interaction comparable only to the written letter and the telephone in its significance. In this humble writer’s opinion, the Net gives far more flexibility and provides an arena that is more diverse than either of the mentioned mediums.
The opportunity to socialize in this private but relatively safe, social but solitary environment affords many things. One of those things is an opportunity to get to know a far away place or a far away person. As I hang out online, I get to know people who frequent the same Quake servers. During game play you find out if the person is a good sport, a good player or even funny. So how do we come to like and lust after those at the other end of the golden wire? One way is just the interaction that brings friendship. There are many online people I count as true friends and the other women in QGirlZ have become close friends that I have come to love as sisters. One of our members recently met a couple guys we have played with for the past year. The computer conduit brought people together in real life in this case. Some of our members have talked to each other and stayed with one another during their travels. But, while restricted to online communication, we bring more to online interactions than our written word; we lug along everything from our hopes to our Gucchis (our baggage). The up side of this is that we are less likely to be rejected. There is some comfort in that. We can pick our audiences and create niches in a social arena that is very different from our other face to face experiences.
While I know little about personality development and assessment, I do know people who do, and they tell me that basically we cast ourselves onto the other person and go from there. We often project who we are into that which we know little about, casting our desires and wishes onto others. What does that mean? I think it means that our own desires, fantasies, and shortcomings are seen in the person who initially we are attracted to (for whatever reason). From there we spin a web of our own making. This is the stuff of lust.
There is nothing wrong with lustful longings. This is not an article on the expression of that impulse, but it’s almost impossible to talk about without mentioning its manifestation. We all long, if not lust, for other people. Not all of us express this the same way. Many of the QGirlZ can tell you stories about those who seem overwhelmed by the impulse, and combined with whatever personality traits, results in some interesting dialog. Some of the women in the QGirlZ Clan have taken their pictures down as a result of strange and perverse emails. In my mind it says nothing about them and much about the writer. When a guy on the other end of the line thinks he is about to “frag” with a women you often get a quick understanding of their attitude toward us. Most guys are very respectful and many do not even care who they play; but some display odd behavior and derogatory attitudes. Some immediately want to email you. Freud said that lust and aggression are closely related. I am not sure how this is connected to Quake but it’s interesting. So is online life a safe environment to experiment with these behaviors or a forum for displaying true nature? Who knows? I have my theories.
We all cast ourselves on the coveted one just like the wizard who uses the crystal ball to appreciate the far away land his likes, his loves and his lustful leanings. No matter where you go, there you are, right? Our dreams and passions are with us just like our skin. Falling in Like, Love, or Lust is a fascinating process that human beings have engaged in since we crawled out of the sea. Today computer technology has added another lens in which to look at ourselves.
Donde Quake 2? 