Fuck everyone at work's idea of "cyber-friends" and DopeFests

Example: At break, I mention that I’m going to Toronto (for TorDope, but I didn’t put it in so explicit terms). Manager: “Who are these people?” Me: “Umm… I met them in chat.” (I said chat, because message board could be a bit incriminating, since I’m on the boards all day. Her: “Well, have you met them?” Me: “Yes.” Partly true. I’d met LaurAnge and The New & Improved Scott before. “Where are you staying?” Me: “At a friend’s house.” (That being Cerowyn, whom I had never met at the time.)

The co-worker who scanned my TorDope pics left one of them on his scanner, and gave it to me before our group’s meeting. “What’s that?” another co-worker asks. “Are those your cyber-friends?” OK “cyber” is so early 90s. Anyway, I’m like “Yes, he’s a real person, his name is Max.”

This isn’t bizarre weird chat where 12-year-old girls are lured to old pervs’ houses. I’m fucking 30 years old and can take care of myself. I’m having four people, none of whom I’ve met, stay with me for Doperéal in August. Do I have any worries? No. I’m sure I can trust lno, Magelin, Elenfair, and iampunha.

Granted, nasty things have happened over the internet in the past, but it’s not going to stop me from enjoying my life. I had a fantastic time at TorDope, and intend to do the same at Doperéal.

Some people don’t get it. It’s annoying, because I have to watch what I say.

Hm. I have people “pick on” me for the fact that most of my friends are online. Yes, I have met some people from the internet. Most of them have been decent, maybe one or two marginally creepy (but not dangerous). I have not gone to any Dopefests yet because I’m not comfortable meeting people I haven’t seen at least a couple photos of. (There’s my weird quirk.)

Just do what I do, ignore the people who seem to have a problem with it; who cares what they think, anyway?

They also don’t understand that there’s a difference between meeting people in chat and on the SDMB. You’re meeting people in a group situation, and you’ve had a chance to get a better understanding of them from the messages posted here on a wide variety of topics, all of them far beyond the “R U Hott!!!” level of intellecutal discourse. (God I’m phat with the wurdz. Too bad I kant spel.)

But, like you say, phuck 'em.

At Doptoberfest, a guy working in the hotel asked a doper (I forget who) if they were with the Internet Friendship Program, or something like that. :smiley:

I don’t know how it works Scott. The people I work with seem to get some kind of vicarious enjoyment out their secondary experience of my acquaintance and meetings with other Dopers, although none of them would be likely to meet someone from the 'net. And none of 'em know the name of this MB.

I did get a few “Ewww, Internet people!” reactions a few years ago, but as I’ve pointed out, I’m not a 14 year old (and as somebody at the last HouDope pointed out, “Yeah, but you could play one on the Internet!” :rolleyes: ).

Describing it as chat doesn’t help, I think.

You have nothing to worry about when I stay with you. Just point out where you keep your valuables, so … um, so I can make sure that Maeglin, iampunha, and Elenfair don’t take them.

[sub]Elly, Maeg, punha - we’ll split it four ways, I swear[/sub]

…what?

Keep all such information on a need-to-know basis. People at work don’t even need to know I visit the SDMB, and they don’t. I’ve effectively built a firewall between my home and my work life. I don’t discuss one with the other except as needed. And when someone overhears a conversation not meant for them (I hate cubicles) and gets nosy, I tell them straight up they are getting nosy and it’s none of their business. Depending on relative positions in the food chain and my personal opinion of the person affects the level of snippiness in my response.

The only reason I do is because I don’t want my bow-legged manager to think I’m on a message board all day at work. So I say it’s chat in the evening, when I get home. She’s already on my case about these things, so I don’t want to incriminate myself further.

Anyway, just as much as I had no problem taking a road trip to Toronto with other Dopers I had never met before, I have no problem taking four others in, whom I haven’t met.

It’s just that some people don’t get it. I’m 30, and I still wouldn’t tell my mother that I went to Toronto in a car with mostly strangers, to stay with someone I’ve never met. Oh, and I’m going to have four people I’ve never met stay with me in August. Baba Wawa does enough stories about internet horror scenarios. Mum would freak. If only she knew…

Anyway, I’ll have confirmation on my vacation dates tomorrow.

This is something I’ve experienced before as well.
People are so ill informed.
Some folks I work with can’t get used to the idea of a computer alone, much less socializing with other computer users online. It’s a visceral fear, as if it was witchcraft or something.

A friend described “chat” to me one time. He’s a great guy, and I like him. He has never chatted, and is quite computer illiterate. I simply held my tongue while he described in utterly shocking and horrifying detail the evils of this scourge.

(chatrooms! gasp) :eek:

Regrettably, there was really nothing I could say to shed any light there. Perhaps it will always be this way. It is absurd though.

My sorority sisters gave me all sorts of shit for chatting online.

I’m married now and they aren’t so neener on them!

Oh Scott, I know what you mean. My family gets on my case all the time because of who they see as my “weird Internet friends.” For example, my mom’s always warning me about giving out my personal information on the Net, and is forever asking me if I go into chatrooms and hang out all day. No, I don’t give out info on the Net (;)), and certainly don’t hang out at chatrooms at day. (I only hang out at #sd maybe once or twice a week when I can get the fast computer at my brother’s)

In fact, if I had told my mom who I was really going to meet at Granville Island last weekend, she would have freaked out for sure. “You’re meeting people off a message board that you’ve never met before? What if you get kidnapped or murdered?” Personally, I didn’t think THAT would happen, as I knew the people I was going to be meeting for the first time in real life.

Yes, I know I live by myself and thus don’t really have to tell her anything about my life, but it’s nice to once in a while. Besides, she and my sister insisted on names and such: finally, I told them I was going to Granville Island to meet a few people from some other place in my life. Better that than recriminations.

So yeah, I completely sympathize with the emotions expressed in the OP. Internet friends can be just as good as IRL friends, and it doesn’t mean you met in a chatroom or somewhere like that.

F_X

Well, I don’t know if I’d trust Iampunha :slight_smile: . Seriously, though, the problem is that there are so many stories of evil people on the net, and people getting kidnapped by people they met on the net, and child molesters finding their victims on the net, etc., that it all snowballs on itself, and instead of actual discussion of net benefits and risks, you get a kind of hysterical panic. It’ll pass, I think, and to a small degree, is starting to already, as people get more comfortable being online, and, more than that, spending leisure time online. It’s just that the old stereotypes take a while to die.

Keep an eye on that Magelin fellow. No reason. I’m just sayin’, is all. :wink:

Why the hell do you have to explain yourself to these people anyway?

Yes, I understand you mentioned a dopefest, and showed some pics, but are these peoples lives so berift of gossip they must give you the third degree?

Yep, Scott I hear ya!

My folks are both pretty cool with the fact that I’ve stayed with other Dopers, gone far away places to stay with other Dopers, and have had Dopers crash at my place as well.

But, some people you can tell, some you can’t. I’m pretty open about it with everyone except co-workers (for the same reason as you scott can’t have them suspecting that I spend time on the boards at work).

Yes, I agree. It would be advisable to keep an eye on lno and maeglin.

lno will disract you by relaying his tales of woe, meanwhile, maeglin, dressed in black, will slip under your radar (which is easy for him, because he built close to the ground) and nab your valubles.

Don’t let them out of your sight.

I guess I am lucky. I’ve been doing this stuff for so long(started on local BBS’, when I was 13ish), that my family doesn’t fret over it - they know that I know how to take care of myself, as far as online communications, and meetings go. For the most part, I have a core group of friends, who I did initially meet online, but who I have spent quite a bit of time with IRL, now, years later, and I visit a couple of message boards. I have met some of the people from different boards, here and there, and they usually know when I am doing so, I just get an “Oh” reaction from them. Of course, by family, I mean my parents, and at least one of my brothers(although I’m fairly certain they all feel that way). A couple of years ago, I met a guy online, and we hit it off really well. I flew out to meet him, in Iowa, where the vast majority of my extended family lives. Oh, the things I had to listen to my grandma rant about…“Are we going to have to have the police dredge the Des Moines river for your body?”, and the likes. Wasn’t a problem, and ended up that my family liked the guy a lot. That didn’t work out, but my current relationship, which is just past it’s 1 1/2 year mark, and now includes a new little human being was also initiated online, and while the situation could be better(hopefully will be real soon, as he’s planning to move here next month), my family really likes him, and I never got so much as the bat of an eye when I went to go visit him.

I know what it’s like, but fortunately, only to a small degree, since my grandma lives halfway across the country from me. :wink: It’s just one of those things where you have heard so many horror stories, but very few, if any, of the positive stories, and so they think that the negative is all that is out here. Just be happy that you don’t live your life in a box, the same way that those people do.

~V

The only person I share details of where I’m going, what I’m doing and with whom on a regular basis is another Doper, so you see how that works. :wink:

Nothin’ to worry at all.

(Roger that, lno)

Ummm… what? ::: whistles innocently :::

:smiley: E.

Most people who have been to a Dopefest with me will remember my mother. :slight_smile: