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WE ARE, IN CYBERSPACE (Part 1) |
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Written by Aaron Darc
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Wednesday, 13 September 2006 |
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Page 5 of 5
C: 865748 Who R U anyway? I bet UR that weird boy that sits in the front row of Biology.
C: 458699 No, I’m not.
C: 596756 I know who U are. Want me 2 tell U, 865748? ;)
C: 458699 You do not! What would U know?
C: 596756 Oh yeah? U dare me?
The irony was, I always signed my posts! Why wouldn’t I? I despised being a number, and I was quite proud of everything I said. I said it. I said it because I thought it. Why wouldn’t I proudly put my name to it?! If somebody approached me and asked, “Is it you who said you didn’t agree with my answers, on Blackboard?” I would say, “Yes. It was. Let me explain again why I disagree with you.”
Nobody had ever really had the guts, or could be bothered perhaps, to put it to me just how “not done” this was. It wasn’t til towards the end of my adventure into cyberspace, that I was eventually attacked en masse for this seemingly challenging rebellion (unconscious as it was) of etiquette. One night, frustarted by the world of Blackboard, C316095 went searching for other cyber realms to explore, and boldly marched into one of the most intense, bizarre cyber forum experiences this country has… the official Big Brother forums.
Gretel’s_lovechild: Geez, we get it OK? Your name is Aaron Darc! R U nuts or sumthin?
Chrissielover: You are so up urself! The way U sign everything! Like we care who U R?!?!
ReggieRox: OK, AARON DARC, u’ve made your point AARON DARC ur so smart AARON DARC, all hail to AARON DARC!!
Saxon_is_sexy: ROFL
Aaron_Darc: I beg your pardon? Why are you reverting to adolescent retort that conveniently takes away from my question or point? Why does my point challenge you so much, then? I’m not saying I’m smart, or even right. I’m just putting forward that maybe Jo doesn’t represent the ideal young sexy woman in control, but a smart female who is victim to her efforts to appease the male gaze (which she values herself from), and in doing so, is led to be criticised for a manipulation that is only an inherit part of the social limitations that have raised her to believe in the things she does. Who is the victim, who is at blame, and who should we be “idolising”, if anyone at all What does my name have to do with this?
No hard feelings,
Aaron
Mikey_is_cool: Thanks for the essay AARON DARC! LOL
Chrissielover: U don’t get it, do you?!
Saxon_is_sexy: ROFL
Well, no. No, I didn’t get it. And I probably wouldn’t have, if it wasn’t for a 40 year old drama teacher who happened to be browsing the forums, and saw the lost, uninitiated cyberuser for what he was. She “pvt’d” me, and began with the line, “I get the feeling you haven’t really used these things before, but…”
Desperate to be an adult about it, and confront my dysfunction by exploring this world further, I conformed, and never signed my posts, ever again. As it was, it was too late to change my username (Aaron Darc), and every now and then an argument would lead to something like, “Aaron Darc? I bet that’s your real name, too, isn’t it?! Ur weird.” In future, I developed usernames that were trying (too hard) to be clever, but these only led to again being labelled “weird” and “up myself” for having usernames nobody could really understand. As the realisation eventually set in, and I finally made sense of this world, I used my username to be cheeky (and slightly bitter, perhaps), and called myself things like, “IdonotEXIST”. I was still weird, and still elitist, to them. For the last Big Brother experience, I cloaked myself more collectively, in “Gretel’s Hansel” (which eventually deteriorated further into “Hansel_and_Gretel”, which doesn’t really mean anything, at all). Forum life is much easier, this way. Nobody is thinking unnecessarily, nobody is threatened by intellectual comprehension of any kind, and nobody is “real”, in the embodiment-of-one’s-identity kind of way. That’s just how they like it. Behold the internet. Don’t worry, be ☺. And if anyone challenges your ☺ness by making you think, or not being the same as you, don’t bother, you can call anyone any awful name under the sun - it’s not like they know you, anyway. There’s no consequences, and you can be anything you want – it’s not like they’re going to find out otherwise, anyway. When the heat gets too much, you can simply disconnect or block them. They don’t even “feel” real. And neither do you. Easy. Welcome to 21st century. next week: PART TWO - Cyberspace, and the Emotional Longing
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