I have become a chatroom junkie. I am so ashamed.

The other blog where I keep my day-to-day diary has a chatroom onsite which I visited infrequently at best until just recently. It was frequented by kids anywhere from age 10 to 17 for the most part, and I have found myself in private conversation with the younger children asking me if I have a “crush”. It is actually very funny. Often when they find out that I am in fact a grown-up and I have not shunned them, they ask me for advice about their love life and other teeny-bopper problems. I am usually very polite to these kids and treat them seriously. It’s a difficult age for many.

However, in the past week I have been in this chatroom almost daily, and often for many hours at a time. There is an older crowd, still teenagers, but more mature, who are actually interesting to talk to and joke around with. Being with these guys virtually makes me feel like a kid again to a certain extent. They appear to accept me as one of them, even though some of them definitely know that I have kids as old as they. It’s exhilarating, and I have become addicted to it.

Then there are the abusers, those sorry souls who go into chatrooms for the sole purpose of uttering misogynistic profanity at the participants, usually with caps lock on. There is one such young man who keeps a diary at the site. He is extremely articulate in his writing, shows quite a bit of intelligence, but is obviously suffering from some kind of personality disorder or is dealing with past baggage. His entries show that he hates women, uses them if he can, and make me think that he was abused as a child or had a very bad experience where his mother was concerned. In the chatroom, however, he sounds like a moron. Every exchange breaks down to the ultimate “SUCK MY COCK, BITCH!” that typifies him. Women are “fat bitches” and his answer to everything is a demand for fellatio. A very sick man. I have had a few altercations with him, but I think that in the future I shall just avoid him completely.

There are other sad cases as well who, while not as bad as the young man mentioned above, always seem to be picking fights. This I do not understand. Among the regulars there is rarely any attempt at real information sharing. Talk is often merely banter, or discussion of popular culture: movies, music, etc. The younger ones are always asking “asl”, and the older ones are always refusing to reply or giving obviously bogus answers. It has become a joke.

I have made virtual friends with a highschool student from Finland who wants to go into the recording industry, a teenaged boy from California who is interested in swords and martial arts, a girl who takes marvellous photographs and several others. It is an interesting mix. They all know each other, I presume from repeated interactions in the chatroom, often by their real names as well. Some keep online diaries, others have signed on just to use the chat. It’s an interesting community. I just have to ask myself what I am really doing there.