March 15, 2009

• Episode 1: Attraction (Re-post)

  After all the enthusiasm I've displayed for Xanga meet-ups, I feel like I also need to admit to the dark side of the web. In May 2008, I posted a series about an experience I had in 2005? or so. I think I have enough new readers and that the subject matter is important enough to run it again, unedited. I'll run one episode each day and have a concluding post on Friday about how I feel now about it all.
  

  This is Episode 1 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

  It was a cold winter day many years ago, and I was sitting at home realizing that my friends had departed with the good weather. I had recently switched responsibilities at my job, and my best friend was busy working on a dissertation. So I sat down with my computer and started looking for new friends.

  Yes, you heard me right. I had recently joined a social networking site and had carefully noted its search function. I could use it to search for people by age, location, gender, and religion. So after playing around with the search function, I decided to use it for the grandest possible purpose...finding some Protestant princesses aged 20-25 in a nearby town to build my Network of Hotness. (That sentence right there should tell you we're headed for EPIC FAIL).

  As I hit "search" and viewed results, I came across a profile of a beautiful young woman who lived a few hours away from me. She was beautiful and intelligent. She was a businesswoman and had gone to Bible school. She had traveled the world extensively and liked sports. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the combination of a girly-girl who liked guy things went straight to my heart (or, um, a little lower, perhaps) and got my attention.

  But, I am not paranoid for nothing. As I started reading her blogs, and looked at her photo albums, I became concerned. Here was a woman who claimed to be a Christian...yet she also unabashedly shared her love of sex and had pictures of herself in less-than-full attire. Thus, she was not living a truly Christian lifestyle as I understand the Christian faith. And yet, everything else was perfect, and she said she was looking to talk to interesting people. What now?

  I spent months wondering if I should say anything, hanging around her profile but never commenting. I'm a persuasive guy. Couldn't I convince her that her views on sexuality were unworthy of a Christian, and then reap the benefits of a reformed soul? Or, it's not as if I have zero skeletons in my closet. Was I judging too harshly? Perhaps I should just talk to her first and gradually attempt to fix her later. I even considered sending her a note when I was going to pass by her town, and resisted with difficulty. I told some of my friends of my dilemma as a way to hold myself accountable, and waited. The months passed, the snow melted, and I wondered if I should just get this over with.

  Then, one day, she put up a message that a fellow named Fred was harassing her and many of her friends. A damsel in distress?! Sounded like a perfect time to intervene. Yet, a comment on that message changed my view on the situation...

  Episode 2, Awareness, will be posted tomorrow. You are free to guess what will happen next in the comments.

  • 3:43 pm
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