If you are new to the Internet, what would be your first association if someone asked you to “stop torturing the keyboard”, “turn on ICQ” or “give me your email”? Without further ado, you would simply decide that it is either a bad joke or some kind of code language. And you would be right in some way, because in the language of virtual communication lovers, “keyboard” is the keyboard, “ICQ” is the well-known ICQ program, and “email” is just your email address – E-mail.
Naturally, spending most of their free time on the Internet, any, especially young person, cannot resist trying to find like-minded people or make romantic acquaintances, which is easiest to do in the so-called chats. Chat (from the English chat – “conversation”) is such a large virtual room where everyone talks to each other in a common window, and it is almost impossible for an inexperienced visitor to follow the conversation at first. The number of chats on the network is incredibly huge, their topics are also not subject to accounting, because they multiply day by day. You can easily open your own chat, but it will take more than one day to attract visitors to it, or look for existing ones, so to speak, according to your interests. There are chats by age (“For those over 35”), by geographic location (“St. Petersburgers – here!”), chats by musical, literary and cinematic interests (“For fans of hard rock”, “Harry Potter”). There are chats with rather vague names: “Through thorns to the stars”, “Cat by the fireplace”, “If you need it”. And, of course, the crowning glory of the list can be the chat “Why all this?..” And really, why? But more on that later.
The first thing you need to do when entering a chat is to choose a “nickname” (from the English nickname – “nickname”). The range of words used for “nicknames” and the flights of fancy of their owners are as wide as the World Wide Web itself. Rarely does anyone take their real name as a “nickname” – most often this is considered boring or even virtual bad form. “Nicknames” like “Cherry” and “Rose” also do not attract attention, because they look too cloying. The very self-critical nickname “the_most_unlucky” or the nickname “Death of Kolobok” sounds much better. All sorts of popular performers and famous personalities also get it. It is unlikely that Britney Spears, Zemfira, Gorbachev and Luc Besson are aware of how much time their virtual doubles spend online. However, the greatest attention is attracted by the visitors of the chats, who certainly tried hard to choose their nicknames – “Prince of Darkness”, “Lord of Sorrow”, “Evil of the Day”, “Death in Twilight Tones”.
Now let's move on to the very essence of virtual communication. People are always looking for friends, loved ones, simply pleasant interlocutors at least for one evening, and for this they sometimes use all available means, one of which in recent years has become the Internet. The number of people spending their leisure time online is now truly enormous. Housewives leave their work and their children for a couple of hours of virtual communication; family people go to chats, apparently just to excite the imagination; and some lonely people generally spend almost all their free time on the Internet.
Of course, it is very easy to make acquaintances or even have a virtual romance on the Internet. Another thing is for what purpose this happens, and how seriously you take it. The fact is that most often a person presents himself online as who he wants to be, and not who he really is. It seems that sometimes people just splash out their old complexes on the Internet and sometimes it looks quite depressing. If, for example, someone sent you their photo (and sometimes several!) – this does not mean at all that this is the person with whom you are so nicely chatting. The gorgeous long-legged brunette of 25 years old, for whom half the chat was pining, turned out to be a 32-year-old “gray mouse”. It turns out that an intelligent and erudite woman, conquering everyone with her intellect and originality, in fact, in her soul just … wants to be more beautiful and younger. And the only place where she can do this is the Internet. A mother of three, mired in everyday life and meekly enduring her husband's nagging, after midnight (just like in a fairy tale), when she goes online, is transformed beyond recognition and turns into a real vamp woman, who has many broken hearts on her conscience – and people's hearts, unfortunately, are far from virtual and their nerves are not made of electronic wires either. Or – can you imagine the state of a man who for six months communicated online with 23-year-old Vika, who later turned out to be … 35-year-old Vlad? These are completely real cases from virtual life, forgive the pun. If you also came online to have fun, then you will simply laugh at such an incident. But there are those who, unfortunately, take relationships on the Internet seriously and often lose their vigilance.
In general, this life on the Internet is not for people with unstable psyche (although there are plenty of such people there) and not for particularly impressionable natures. Because not only the above-described “surprises” can deprive you of faith in people for a long time, but also the transfer of relationships from virtual to real space can sometimes be very painful. People jump up from their places with one suitcase and rush to their virtual lovers with the intention of a long and happy life, only to find themselves practically on the street in a strange city in a month with no way to return home. Of course, the virtual world is very similar to the real one – because there are also real people there, the same as those around us – with all their experiences, intrigues, lies, joys, feelings and emotions. But still, a person's eyes will sometimes tell you much more than his most heartfelt words printed in the ICQ window.
Naturally, in addition to all these “horrors of our town”, there are also very extraordinary personalities on the Internet, with whom there will be no empty chat chatter, but full and interesting communication. Some meet their loved ones, and some even create families in the future. So everything is not so scary. It's just that the costs of taking virtual life too seriously are much greater. As, incidentally, in real life, but in real life it is still easier to get your bearings or at least not lose your bearings. So it's better to turn off your computers and at least go for a walk around the city. And I, perhaps, will sit a little longer.
