Oh, What a Lonely Boy (or Girl)

 Janelle tells me often that I should stop thinking about facebook as anything but entertainment. People lie, she says. All the time. I know she's right. People aren't who they say they are, she tells me. And I nod. People will say whatever they need to do to be close to you, she reminds me, and I feel it in my heart that she's right.

But then, I tell her, I met you. And I met you, she says to me. But... But nothing, she interrupts. Most people are liars. The sooner you realize that, the better off you will be.

Many, many moons ago, I chatted online at Virtual Places. Picture a chat program where you could go to different pages and hang out with your buddies and chat. The cool part is that your self was represented by these avatars or pictures and you could paint and decorate them. That's how I learned about paint shop pro and websites. The avatars or pictures you used, were never you. Ever. They were always pictures of celebrities you admired or wanted to be. I of course picked the sexiest people to be -- Janet, Naomi, Tyra. Whatever my image of beauty was, that's who I would be in my avatar.  In the most bizarre of circumstances, people would fall in love with you based on your selection (that wasn't you) - and then want to chat. People would also "get married" in pretend marriages and have vows and flowers and venues and even honeymoons. On line. Yes. I was one of them. It was the most silliest things I have ever done in my entire online life. And there were hundreds of thousand of people who did it.

It's ironic (I think) that we have created a world online under the guise of connection, but really what happens is people become more and more disconnected the longer they are online attempting to connect. We have built this world online where you can only share what you are really doing to whomever you want to share it with. You can select permissions and let people only see a glimpse of who you are. You can take pictures, apply filters and cover up scars or crooked teeth if you want to. You can also maintain several profiles and have one for "fun" and one for "work" and "family." I've seen people married and calm on their family profiles but wild and single and living the life on their "fun" profile and no one is the wiser. Catfishing people is so easy it shouldn't even be referred to as a sport. It takes nothing to be brilliant at it, and there's so many levels, anyone could participate. You could be a catfish running around Facebook spouting out truth and light and be sitting in your own world of darkness and no one could ever tell. Or you could be Naomi Campbell and find someone thirsty enough to believe it.

So I know I shouldn't be surprised when I find out that people are lying about their relationships, about their off line lives, about their commitments, about their sexuality, spirituality, philosophies...I shouldn't be surprised when people suddenly become clear to me and I see their fraudulent selves. I shouldn't be disappointed when people fabricate stories to illicit sympathies, or create dramatic situations for themselves so that they can appear to be the hero or voice of reason or even some defendant of a cause.

There are a lot of lonely people in the world. And lonely people will do anything in order not to be.