Tuesday, June 9, 2015

but i live in a hologram with you...

Lorde - Buzzcut Season

Do you have an internet friend?

Someone who shares the same interests as you are, whether if you both idolise the same celebrity singer or you just kind of accidentally met from a forum which mainly talks about plants, vintage style, DIY, anything which you happens to like? Or maybe you're a type number two like me, who's an awkward in real life, but cheerful, goofy, funny, and confident in texts, chats, emails, letters--anything but in person. You find it easier to talk through written words, because when you actually meet person to person with someone, you're so vain! You think these bad thoughts that maybe your conversing partner is actually judging your every words or your appearance--what you wear, that one zit in your face, that maybe he or she think you're a freak because you are pretty sure they observe how you always like to wanders alone all the time. That's why you always think very carefully of what you're going to say, you're scared of saying the wrong things--making most of time you end up not talking at all. Even though it feels like it's not true, though I think if you're still similar with me up to this point, theres a fat chance you are in a denial. That's why you want an escape--we are humans after all and we need company. So, you go to the internet and chat with a random person, and if you're lucky that they don't ask for boobies pic of you (and also making sure they're not some strange old person) you become good friends with them. 

I, personally have an experience with this online intercommunication. There are 3 people who are still very dear to my memory. One from UK, one from Brazil and the latest is from Sweden. The first two are my first online strangers I've ever become friends. I met both of them from Twitter, the one from UK named Guilherme, and the one from Brazil named Brenda. Those two are related. Guilherme is from Brazil but moved to Kensington with her mother and her sister. The three of us were twittering almost everyday. I never actually talk with my own voice or see their faces, we would recognised each other faces from profile pictures or uploaded photos. That was around 6 years ago. They were fun and I found out that they would available for me to talk about every bit of my problems. The funny thing was, since I usually filled up the timeline with my replies to them, there are 2 of my elementary school friends who apparently made acquaintance with Guilherme and Brenda. It was okay at first, but as time passed by it felt kind of weird. Me and those 2 people from my real life, we barely even meet since we were not at the same school anymore at that time, let alone talk! Here they are chatting with my online friends whom they accidentally knew since they found it from my Twitter correspondence and they were talking with them but acted like I'm not even in the picture. After 2 years of that weird situation, I found myself slowly drifted away from them. We would not reply each other as much until finally we moved on and ignored one another. 

The latest one is from Sweden. He was my online friend for a year and a half. He's a year younger than me and his name is Mathias. I met him in a chat room on the year 2012 and as two lucky and naive people in that room, we found each other. He was very sweet and encouraging. Up to this day I still remembers what his dreams and anxieties. Four times a week we would go on video chatting on Skype and I also remembers that one time he loses a bet on a competition between the two countries (I forgotten which ones) on 2013 World Cup , and had to sing a song to me--and God how he was so horrible at it or when he overheard my father's voice and thought that he was mad at something but it's actually just the way he is. He was the best online friend I've ever had (if you wonders what he looks like, just imagine a young Bradley Cooper). Yet even him also departed from me after a fight that was so unimportant but was too easy to be the reason on our online separation. 

What I like about befriending people in the net is the opportunity to be whatever you want--or of course, finally being able to confidently unleash and express the real you. You can create a whole persona and just be adventurous by experimenting lots of things with it (well, as far as the term "adventurous" goes by sitting alone in the darkness of your room with a laptop on your lap LOL).

Furthermore, recognise this?

Bad dog!
I guarantee you 100% that this quote is true. We need to be extra careful out there, because the internet is a platform where all the people in the world embedded--and they all brings different motives. Having friends online is complicated, we might unknowingly being tricked into a fraud, or lured to a meet up where we would be the target of a rape. Even if you think you have this special bond with this significant other, you might be wrong and it can just slipped away from your fingers like that. Why? It's because the internet is not the ideal place to search for a person whom you can trust wholeheartedly. You'll never sure if someone is as true a it's saying. When you have a conflict, you can't confront and sort it out directly like humans in a relationship naturally would. You depend on the line, on the gadgets on your hands. Both of your commitments being questioned all the time and if only one person work very hard for it to keep going, it will always very simple for the other to just disappear and cut all connections since both of you never actually meet. 

Nevertheless, it is still intriguing. You feel like you live in this perfect fantasy where you would actually meet each other and finally be able to touch them, talk to them, hold their hands, go somewhere and do things together. You keep holding on to this vision, making reality seems more bearable, yet you know it's just holograms. It's not there, it's never there. It'll all just plainly ordered alphabets, frozen pictures or grainy video shown in each other screens. It doesn't mean it can't be real though. Many people met their best friends or lovers online. One thing to understand, connecting with others from the internet, sometimes meaning that there's distance. For example--like in my case, I live in Indonesia, and my friend lives in Sweden. To meet each other we need to build trust, patience, strong wills to save the money and make the time, if not--most of the time it will always end up like Gotye's song : "Now you're just somebody that I used to know..."

M.


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