Guest Blogger: Cyber Castles by Elusive Orchid

Hello MGF readers! I'm off to support some local arts tonight, so in my place is our very first Guest Blogger. Thanks to Elusive Orchid for her contribution. Enjoy! - Lily

I finally have a place to rant.

But first a little bit about myself. My name is Elusive Orchid (pleased to meet you), obviously a pseudonym. I use this name not because I am mysterious or anything of that nature, simply because I don’t like to be tied down to any one single thing. I like my freedom and my friends would say I am highly spontaneous.

I am a smart-assed, sarcastic, adventurous, fun-loving girl. Recently divorced, now happily single (more on those topics at a later date). I am a student, mother, teacher, lover, photographer, writer…in short, a Modern Girl Friday.

When Mrs. Lillian T. White asked me to contribute to her blog I thought “What an awesome idea!” A forum where real women can voice their opinions on real life issues (we all have them, afterall). I also figured “Hey why not, I love to write and what is funnier and more ironic than real life?”

I have been writing since the age of 8 and I haven’t stopped yet. I will admit though that writing has taken a backseat to photography these days. Though I don’t write as much as I used to, I still find the time to let my creative juices flow every now and again.

For the women out there reading and hopefully commenting/contributing to this blog, I hope it makes you think, laugh, reflect and give you a much needed sense of sisterhood. Remember, all of us no matter our social class, upbringing, culture or geographical location share commonalities, not the least of which is our femininity. Be proud of being a woman and a modern one at that!

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Cyber – According to the Encarta thesaurus, synonyms for cyber include fake, replicated, pretend and imitation.

The Modern Girl Friday is intelligent and techie oriented, so in this twenty-first century, with technology running rampant, it’s not surprising Lillian and I met on a cyber chat site. In the beginning we talked in the public forum. Eventually we ended up chatting on Yahoo IM and found we had a mutual chat friend in common. This mutual friend happens to be a male and this is where the story starts.

Lillian (or Lils as I like to call her) and I have been deemed “natural flirts” by our online cohort. We have lots of fun teasing, being sarcastic and just enjoying life. We simply go about our business and hang with our “group” of regular friends. We do however like to cause a bit of trouble now and then, nothing serious just our “natural” flirting and mischievous streaks making themselves known.

What Lils and I have noticed is that a lot of other women on this site don’t particularly like us. It seems that men would rather converse with us then have cyber with them (not that we would cyber). We regularly get comments like “She got another one” or “Don’t you have enough men to talk to?” Now realize Lils and I talk to these men about every subject under the sun. We can both carry on lengthy and intelligent conversations about a myriad of topics. This is just us…don’t ask us to change who we are just because you don’t like being ignored.

Probably the main reason women seem to dislike us goes back to our mutual friend, let’s call him Sam. Sam is also a natural flirt and is extremely talented with words. He has a way of making any woman he chats with feel special. He also has a very enigmatic and charismatic personality, which is rare, both in real life and online.

Well it so happens that the three of us are very good friends, one might say we have developed a “unique” bond. This bond comes through when the three of us are in open forum. We challenge each others’ intelligence and demand each others’ laughter. This just leads to us laughing our asses off. We are simply playing for laughs and nothing else. Because he pays more attention to us, many women feel that Lils and I are “stealing” Sam, denying them their “dream” of snagging this so-called perfect man.

Now that is simply is ridiculous. One, how can anyone “steal” someone? Each person has free will after all….right? Two, these are words being typed and read on a screen. Hell, for all anyone knows the person on the other side of the computer is a total fraud. Three, helloooooooo…this is online, not real life! We are here to waste some time and have some fun…nothing more…nothing less. Four, our trio has real lives outside of chat. Chat serves a recreational purpose, a diversion if you will from our real lives.

Five, I will say it again, helloooooooo…this is online, not real life.

This begs the question of how can people delude themselves into believing online is real life?

Let me give you an example. There is a “cyber” couple on this forum. They are both married to other people, have kids and live quite a few states from each other. They have this “cyber” marriage and have had it for quite a while. They literally spend hours on chat and yahoo together. It seems the majority of their real lives are taken up online.

There are two questions that pop up with regards to this situation. If they expended as much effort on their real life marriages as they do on chat, is it possible their real lives might be better? If they are as unhappy in their real life marriages as they claim, would it not make sense to leave? It’s not like a real life spouse can magically get booted off the system once the computer is shut down. Real life relationships only get better when partners work together.

For those of you out there gasping or shocked at this revelation, trust me. This couple is just one of many “cyber” couples out there. As a matter of fact there are many married people on this site that have online significant others. I’m not saying that if two unattached people meet online it can’t work out, I am simply saying that online relationships shouldn’t take precedence over real life ones. There has to be a line drawn somewhere.

Another problem with these online “relationships”, and I use that term loosely, is the amount of gossip they churn out. It seems the majority of chat is taken up with speculation. Who’s “dating” who, who dumped who? It’s like high school revisited, and god forbid if one chatter is linked to a “desirable” candidate of the opposite sex. At that point, jealousy runs rampant. Lils and I will more often than not sit back and laugh at the immaturity being displayed.

While we can ignore this childish behavior, we do find it extremely amusing most of the time. To the two of us, it makes no sense to be jealous of someone you have never met. In all honesty we find jealousy to be a wasted emotion. The feeling is one better off thrown in the trash. The online world is supposed to be fun, silly, and a way to de-stress from real life. It becomes a problem when the lines between reality and cyber become blurred or disappear all together.

Even I, someone who is completely adamant about living my real life first, can see the allure of cyberspace. It’s so easy to be bolder, flirtier, beautiful and more intelligent when anonymity is the name of the game. The online realm is all about how you type and what you say. This isn’t a personal voice conversation, there’s time to think about what you are typing. Mistakes can easily be erased before you hit “enter.”

I however prefer to let my true self shine through, both in chat and in real life. There should be no difference in one’s personality in any situation. I actually think people should be able to be more real online. There is no one to judge you for your looks, your clothes, those material things. Let’s face it, when you meet someone in person, the majority of us go by that first physical impression. Being online, the physical is not a factor.

If you find your online personality has more fun than your real life one, work to make it a reality. Rather than reserving the flirty, devil may care woman for the cyber world, integrate those characteristics into your true personality, after all they must be there. If that attitude can come through in chat it is a real part of you, maybe it just needs some unearthing.

So…a word to the wise…live your real life first and don’t build cyber castles in space. Let online remain what it should be…diversion.