Better Safe Than… Oh, Hell, I’m Never Safe
Posted on Tuesday, March 14th, by CJ
So I keep a spare e-mail address. Actually, more than one. The function of these spare e-mail addresses is to keep me safe from the insane masses out there — because believe you me (and my friends who have heard my multiple Dates From Hell stories), there are some crazies out there, and if you're going to deal with random strangers over the prestigious Internet, you'd best have some protection. Of course, this is the different kind of protection than the knife that one of my first dates once showed off to me (bad timing on her part too — I was driving her home and the car was moving at the time… but that's another story for another time).
I mean, my main e-mail address has my full name on it, first and last, and it IDs me pretty readily, and I use it for just about everything. So I have one e-mail address that has my real first name on it — just my first name — and another one that has an old nickname on it, both in the e-mail address and the fake name on the account. I hardly ever use the nickname one, but I use the first-name-only one a fair amount with women.
See, I do a fair amount of Internet dating. I have my reasons. And I've learned that there are a lot of women out there who are… shall we say, unstable? Yeah, let's say that. And I've become more and more careful as I go along, because I've run into more and more… umm… unstable… women. It kind of makes me wonder if there's something in the continually increasing level of pollution in the water and air that's making people more crazy as time goes on.
Is it the fact that it's easier to convey crazy over the Interschnitzel than when you first meet someone in a bar or in just plain realtime like at the supermarket or the drugstore or something? Or are women on some kind of time-release crazy that is just accelerated over the computer? Because I never hear stories about how this kind of thing happened with our parents. At least, not mine. Then again, they did things the old-fashioned way. When my parents started dating, computers took up half of a room and came outfitted with a steering wheel that looked like it belonged on Old Ironsides.
But again, I digress. When did dating — or at least looking for someone — become a trial and tribulation that required this kind of behavior? I'm an open kind of guy. I never thought I'd need to hide behind fake e-mail addresses and avatars before I was convinced that it was safe to "reveal" myself to someone.
What's the deal? Are people just getting more insane? Or is it that the Internet is just bringing the nutty nut girls out in droves because they don't need to hide it and can just hang out behind a keyboard, where it's easier to be unhinged because it's not as easily apparent as when you meet someone in a meat market? It's almost enough to drive a guy back to the bars and clubs to try to pick up chicks there.
March 14th, at 11:07 am
I too know what it’s like to have multiple emails. I think part of our generation’s problem is that the Internet enables folks to behave in such a way that they wouldn’t normally do in the real world. A freedom to be freaky or something. Who knows
March 27th, at 10:46 pm
How can you not have multiple emails. Whether it be for online dating, or just having some type of privacy. The internet is awesome because it allows you an amount of privacy.
In the years before the whole internet dating idea took off I had different areas of town that I would take my dates to. Never to the places I hung out, just so I could maintain a certain amount of anonymity in my life.
It’s not bad, it’s just that before your date becomes your girlfiriend and she becomes your wife, you want to make sure so you don’t have to worry about ruining your personal life with your…personal life. Multiple email is no different.