Webs we weave

Reading a comment from PJ just now, I felt powerless and unmanned (you have to be a man, I think, to know how unbearable that feels).

I am reminded that the people I know through the interwebnet are real -- feel real to me, I mean -- and can touch me. They can be just as real as those I know in the meat, sometimes more so, because we don't have to lie to one another (you know what I mean, we don't have to make excuses about how we can't make Saturday night because we're washing the car... or how we'd love to come to dinner but the kid has a cough). If we don't want to talk, we can leave it till later.

We can choose one another. That's what it's about for me.

PJ is a wonderful woman. Anyone who has interacted with her knows that. Her foremost characteristic is her desire to make others laugh. That is a damned good trait in a person. A man has scared her enough to rob her of the enjoyment she had -- and brought to us -- on the interwebnet. He has done the worst thing you can do here -- he has breached her persona and intruded in her self, the passwords, files and details that make us safe. More importantly, he poses a threat to her IRL.

We all meet ugly people. Sometimes they are wolves in sheep's clothing and they charm us. There's no shame in being taken in by someone who is trying to deceive you. (If only people on the Uselessnet could learn that lesson!) But sooner or later the teeth will show.

In interwebnet terms I am a fairly powerful character. In a medium where capability in writing is an enormous plus, I make a good specimen. It is easy to be fearless, bold, when you have the tools for it.

But I cannot do a thing for PJ. Except to tell her that I miss her blog, even if it sucks donkey cock, and her witless blather from misc.writing, but I would not miss that guy, not one piece, not one iota, not a jot, a tittle, a speck, an atom, if he were never to cast his wolf's shadow over her life -- and that small part of her life that I am -- again.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:42 pm