Musings: Guide to Self Pics on the Web

Well, it's been a whole week since my last post. Either writing is no longer a novelty or I've got a lot off my chest. That, and my boy came back early this week! I missed him so much. He said it was good to be home.

I was thinking that the internet can sometimes be a funny thing. It's one of the only places you meet people where the first impression is not based on your physical appearance. It is so anonymous at the same time. You never really know who's behind the keyboard. Which makes it so easy to be mean to someone without feeling guilty. I like cruising the boards at imdb, whenever I have a question about a movie I've seen (I didn't get that part where he says....What was the name of the song that was playing at that part where....etc), somebody has either asked the question already and it's been discussed, or I can ask and somebody will almost always answer. However, there's so much arguing about stupid things that usually have very little to do with the movie or tv show in question. Inevitably it will denigrate into an insultfest with each person making fun of the other person's educational background, or accusing the other person of having no life or another stupid thing when they have no clue about what the person they are arguing with is really like, other than one thinks Wedding Crashers is the worst movie ever made and the other one thought it was really funny. And of course, there are the people who are obviously looking for arguments by going to numerous boards pronouncing the movie the worst ever made, or making sweeping generalized racial stereotyped statements hoping to get a rise out of someone. I don't understand. What does that accomplish?

Another thing I don't understand is why people freak out when they find out their picture is being passed around to other people. We don't walk around in life and meet people in bars, or at the store, or through friends or at work wearing a big paper bag over our head with a big, black question mark on it, holding up a sheet hiding our body so the other person doesn't see what we really look like. Then wait til after we've hung out with them for awhile and they get to know us until we're sure they really like us before we take off the bag and throw away the sheet. That doesn't happen in the real world. The three unwritten rules in regards to pictures on the internet are this:

1. Thou shalt not post or send any pictures that you aren't comfortable with the whole world seeing, because they will get passed around.

2. Thou shalt never post or send anyone a picture that is not you, because you will always, always get found out.

3. If it looks too good to be true and it's not a webcam pic, it's probably a fake or really old.

I don't know how many stories I've heard from people about meeting someone online, getting to know them, starting to really like them because you click, they see a picture of their new friend and they look good. Then when it's hot and heavy and a meeting is arranged, right before they meet the girl(sorry girls, but I've heard way more stories from guys having this happen than girls), she announces that the picture is actually 5 years old, before she gained 50lbs and stopped taking care of herself and vaguely resembles the picture. Most of the time, the guy ends up saying, if I had seen who she was first, I probably still would've been interested because she was cool. But since they lied and misrepresented themselves, they felt like they weren't able to trust them or felt that they didn't really know the person. If they lied about that, what else is true and what isn't? People are funny, sometimes.

More ramblings to come.....