I was having a conversation with a friend this evening. A conversation that made me think about how small the world has gotten. Not so many years ago, this conversation would have been impossible, because while I was sitting in my home in Atlanta, Georgia she was in her home in Singapore.
I would have never met her without Twitter.
There are so many great people I would have never met without the internet.
Like my husband, for example.
That’s right…I would have never met my husband without the internet. And this is a huge confession, because we have lied about this for years. Every time people asked us where we met, we would tell them we met in a Karaoke bar. Because that is so much better than saying we met on a social network. No…saying we met in a bar and after having several drinks, got into our cars and drove home...was infinitely better than saying we met by typing to each other and exchanging photographs.
There used to be such a stigma attached to meeting someone online. You were crazy…foolish…and probably destined for the Jerry Springer show.
It isn’t like that anymore.
Now, people think you’re nuts if you’re not online meeting new people. They wonder why you aren’t living in the current century…why you aren’t tech savvy (and for those of you who aren’t tech savvy, tech is short for technology.)
My kids live a world where they keep in touch with friends and family via Facebook and MySpace. My sister teaches college where she interacts with her students strictly through online forums and email. My life is spent on the computer sharing words with people on Twitter. And it doesn’t feel the least bit strange.
I take that back…sometimes it feels a little strange.
Just this evening, a fellow writer I met through Twitter asked me to add him as a friend on Facebook. When I did, the images I was seeing were of a high school student. I immediately hit the panic button in my brain and assumed I had stumbled upon an online stalker. My momentary freak out sent up a red flag across Twitter outing him as a teenage boy.
After he accepted my already tendered friend request, and spent several minutes talking me down from the proverbial ledge, I was able to see the rest of his profile to confirm that he was, in fact, a grown man with teenagers of his own. Oops. My bad.
Hey, you can’t blame me for overreacting…I’m a woman, and we do that. And you can never be too careful when meeting people online. Just like meeting people in the grocery store or the library, you will run across the occasional crazies from time to time.
But then again, you might just run across your new best friends, critique partners, or spouses. Just ask me…it can happen.
Until the next time…I’ll be sending an instant message to my husband to meet me in the bedroom.