Megan’s Blog #7: 12.11 ~ Romance or Cyber-Stalking?!
The “New York Girl Of My Dreams” hit headlines this week
Sydney Morning Herald: www.smh.com.au/news/technology/i-had-to-meet-him/2007/11/11/1194766510016.htm
NY Girl of my Dreams: www.nygirlofmydreams.com
Okay, so ‘He’ sees a girl and he reckons she’s hot - or falls in love at first sight - whatever… ‘She’ leaves the train carriage before they have time to connect in person. Then He uses the internet to find Her and within 24 hours they’re in touch and on talk shows talking about this new ‘breakthrough’ in internet romance and dating…
Some might say it’s an out-and-out case of stalking; tracing someone inappropriately which, in regular circumstances would have otherwise been a random anonymous and fleeting encounter on public transport. Did He become too obsessed with Her?
Others might say romance is alive and well in the virtual age, upholding the idea that the internet and computer culture have not transformed us all into emotionless zombies - rather the opposite, creatures who crave connection and preserve romance as a way of connecting with others.
What say you? Please feel free to post comments below.
And come along to DestFest Week 3 and see Four-Eyed Monsters, a film about this very subject - love and communication in the digital age. FEM co-director Arin Crumley will also be part of the panel discussion live and online.
Yeah, see this event may well be the cute page-6 story that we all love to forward, but when she goes SINGLE WHITE FEMALE on his geeky arse, then we’ll all wanna make our MySpace profiles private.
Ok i dont know how many more buzz-phrases i couldve heaped on that paragraph. In all honesty, the notion of how ‘technology’has impacted on our social structures has always been difficult to predict. There are elements where we truly have turned into zombies. Hello, im commenting on a blod at 2am. Surely there’s some kind of sex i could be having now? who knows. But, as for my personal opinion, (and im a serial bandwagon whore, at the best of times) I think that technologies such as the ones used by NY-Talking-To-Women-In-Real-Life-Scares-Me Guy have added endless layers of diversity to the manner in which we communicate, at least enough to make up for the ones that it has made obselete. i.e We may not write sonnetts, but we do cutting and incisive wall-posts on facebook.
We have more threads of connection than we ever have before, and i think it changes our perception of relationships. Like, What the hell is a facebook friend, if i havent met them before? Is that friendship still valid? Its changed the way we speak, behave and spend time… perhaps NY-Guy is showing us how we may well all find our new friends of the future?
anyways… argue with me. its not like you know where i live.