I met two of my four exes online. I know; I’m totally a child of the Internet age. I have no idea what it’s like to only meet guys at school or church or (ugh) in bars. Of course, the Internet is kind of one giant bar, and you never know exactly what you’re walking into.
I wasn’t actively looking for a boyfriend when I met Shane online. I met him in a role-playing chat room. For those unfamiliar with role-playing chat rooms, they’re just like regular chat rooms except everyone is playing a character… so, kind of, they’re still just like regular chat rooms, except you make no pretense about pretending to be someone you’re not.
This particular role-playing chat room was a Star Wars themed one, I think. It pains me to say that, because I want to convince you (and myself) that I was eventually able to shed the weirdness of middle school and blend with normal society. But I didn’t really tell anyone about the Star Wars role-playing chat room, so I was half-way there anyway.
My character was a gorgeous, red-haired, kick-ass smuggler with a great ass and a bad attitude—basically, everything I wanted to be and wasn’t. His character was a suave, good-looking adventurer—and I will admit that he actually did turn out to be suave and good-looking, especially for a 15-year-old.
Admittedly, it didn’t take much to impress me with boys at fifteen. Joe had been fond of writing crappy love poems in rhyming (kind of) iambic pentameter, so I was actually pretty impressed with any human male who could string words together without trying to rhyme “love” and “gave,” and “mine” and “kind.” Shane was considerably more talented than that.
Our characters actually fell in love before we did. Yep, my character and his character were kind of an Internet item, at least in our little Star Wars-ified corner of it. He read my crappy fan fiction and I read his less crappy actual fiction, and a bond formed.
Internet dating before match.com. That’s how it happened.
Now, Matt I actually did meet on match.com. Well, kind of. I had a profile up there, he stalked me, but he hadn’t paid for premium service, so he had to find out my IM name in some other creative, stalkery manner instead of contacting me through the website. Stalking as a demonstration of love: it actually usually works. At least if you’re me.