By Joel Moses
In a dimly lit bar, dull-eyed patrons are moving about the room. A few of them have struck up conversations, but mostly they just sit around and watch and wait.
Suddenly, and without fanfare, a woman appears in the doorway. She tosses her mane of jet-black hair and glares defiantly, tantalizingly, into the room. The men are gawking unashamedly. They stare at her in slack-jawed wonder, each of them lost in his own fantasy, his own world.
As the woman moves through the room, a few of the men turn away, but most of them continue to follow her with their eyes. She gives no sign that she knows they’re watching, yet she seems confident that she is the center of attention. She takes a seat at the bar and summons the bartender. She orders a martini. When the drink arrives, she gets ready to open her purse.
“No, it’s paid for,” says the bartender. He points toward a dark corner, where a man is sitting. He is a wearing a tan trenchcoat and a fedora that shades most of his face. She can see that he is smoking a thick stogie. When the woman smiles at him, she can see him smile back. He makes only a slight gesture, a flick of the hand that holds his cigar, but she knows he is beckoning her, inviting her to join him, silently, alone at the table in the corner, in the dark.
With a crash, the bar disappears in a flash of white light.
Tap tap tap.
“Damn!”
Paul Roberts yanks his fingers away from his computer keyboard and rummages through the pile of papers and diskettes on his desk.
“Where are my damn cigarettes? I gotta have a cigarette,” he says, annoyed. “When I go for my vices, I tend to do them all at once.”
Roberts finds the cigarettes in a compartment of his backpack, and, with the quick snap-snap of a Zippo lighter, he fires up. The acrid smell of cloves wafts through the room. Roberts sits down again. Once again, his fingers start clicking across the keyboard.
This is how Roberts, a computer technician for the state, has spent almost every night for the past three years. He admits that he has given up many other activities so that he can spend four hours nightly at his keyboard, indulging in his current addiction, “Internet Relay Chat.” Like hundreds of other Nashvillians, he spends his evenings on the IRC, looking for companionship, searching for excitement, looking for the safety and thrill of fantasy, searching for the anonymous face of love.
Every night Roberts meets people who are really there—IRC users type their messages in “real time.” If a message appears on Roberts’ screen, he knows that somebody is really out there, somewhere, typing that message at that very moment. These people are not just figments of his imagination, even though they may be creatures of self-invented fantasy. It’s estimated that, even while Roberts is gleefully typing away, as many as 13,000 other IRC users may be sending messages over any one of almost 6,000 different channels. IRC is, by far, the largest online romantic-chat service in the country. It easily outdistances similar chat areas on America Online and CompuServe.
It is not easy to know, for certain, who is using IRC. When users describe themselves, there’s no way to know who is—or isn’t—telling the truth. The Internet doesn’t tattle, and users are not required to tell the truth about anything—even about matters of gender. Apparently, however, most of IRC’s users are male—some estimates suggest 70 percent of IRC users are men—and most are college age. Even the face of fantasy, however, may be changing. With the expanding sales of Internet hookups, the average Internet user is growing older. It is not uncommon to run into an IRC user who is female and 40. Just a couple of years ago, such an encounter would have been almost impossible.
Whatever these thousands of people may really be like, they have all signed on with IRC. They use all sorts of computers, IBM, Macintosh, Amiga, UNIX, and they all whiz back and forth across the network disguised by their “screennames.”
An IRC user can call himself—or herself—“MrPink” or “HunkyDory.” As long as nobody else has the same “screenname,”the nickname belongs to that one user forever, and it provides access to a universe of mindless chatter. The user types in a single line, introducing himself to the world of IRC, and then presses the “Enter” key. Immediately, the user is at the world’s largest corner bar, a place where it’s easy to meet friends, swap stories, raise hell and, most often, eavesdrop. However, an evening with IRC isn’t exactly like one huge, worldwide episode of Cheers. When it comes to making friends via IRC, you don’t get the chance to scope them out. You’re just supposed to accept them, sight unseen. You have to take them at their word. Their word is all you have.
Once the screenname is entered, all traces of identity effectively vanish. No longer is Paul Roberts merely “Paul”; When he’s on IRC, he is “Dagmar,” man, or maybe woman, of mystery. “IRC is like a big community,” Roberts says. “But it’s not like any other community you may have seen, because it’s based on anonymity. Gender, age, race—nothing matters when you’re sitting there using IRC.”
Amy McNabb, a 23-year old senior at Middle Tennessee State University, learned about IRC about a year ago, while she was taking a computer class. Before long, she was using it every few days, often for hours at a time.
“Sometimes, I just look at my schoolwork in front of me, then say, ‘Forget it,’ and go chat for a while,” McNabb says. “It just seems like a good choice at the time.”
Most schools don’t allow IRC clients to use their computer labs. And, at least officially, none of MTSU’s servers are equipped with IRC software. Perhaps inevitably, however, a group of students has installed the software for anyone who wants to use it. “I don’t think the school [MTSU] likes it there,” says McNabb. “I think they’d rather see it disappear.
“It can be addictive,” she explains.
Jaime Berlin, 19 and also an MTSU student, agrees. After a year of using IRC, she admits, she understands how people become addicted:
“It’s easier to drop your inhibitions when you’re anonymous,” she explains “[IRC users] don’t alter their identities when they’re chatting. They just let more of themselves come through. In fact, it’s a bit like teenagers getting drunk.”
Except for the fact that, no matter what they say, not every IRC user is a teenager.
Chat services may be high-tech, but they depend on the age-old power of the written word. The user must convey emotion and personality without relying on facial expressions or gestures. Readers must then draw their own conclusions. On the Internet, like anywhere else in life, first impressions are the name of the game.
In face-to-face situations, McNabb says, “body language is important, but chat doesn’t need it. Many times, you can get more out of what you read than from a person-to-person conversation.”
Nevertheless, especially when it involves romance, chat can be an emotional roller-coaster. “I’ve been really angry online before, and I’ve also been really sad,” McNabb says. “You can’t necessarily hear [other peoples’] words, but you can almost see what they’re saying to you.
“It can get pretty weird sometimes. Sometimes [when I feel emotional] I think to myself, ‘What are you doing?’ Sometimes your responses to others can be bizarre.”
IRC users often form strong emotional bonds with whoever—whatever—is at the other end of the computer line. Many IRC users form hard and fast friendships, based on their mental images of what their fellow chatters look like. Usually, that’s as close to reality as the fantasy gets.
In fact, it’s unusual for chatters actually to meet in person. Even though Berlin and McNabb are both MTSU students, and even though they had heard about one another through the IRC grapevine, they had not met before the day they were interviewed for this article.
McNabb had met a fellow chat user before. The experience, however, had been less than pleasant. Late last year she agreed to meet a man with whom she had chatted frequently. Her fantasies were dashed.
“He just didn’t look right to me,” she explains. “He didn’t act right. I had built an image of him in my mind, and he wasn’t the same.”
The thrill was gone. Now, she’s keeping her distance. “I think I’ve talked to him once since we met,” McNabb says.
The rage for Internet romance has a lot to do with the allure of fantasy, but it also promises to satisfy an even deeper human need—the need for companionship. In “real life” (which IRC users call “RL”), the search for romance can lead just about anywhere: to a church, to a dance, to a bar. It can, however, only occur at one place at a time. The search for Internet love is more like an English fox hunt, bounding across 6,000 individual channels.
In chat rooms such as #romance and #love, lonely singles congregate, hoping that their verbal skills will entice some other Internet rover. Perhaps, if they are skillful enough, or if the other person is desperate enough, a hands-off romantic frenzy may ensue. Initial meetings take place in public areas, where other users can listen in. Typically, in those areas, the conversation remains well-mannered and discreet. Users describe themselves, banter about the places where they live and, sometimes, trade a few bawdy jokes.
Some IRC users have achieved love chat. When 49 #romance users were asked if they had found love in a chat room, more than half of them said they had been successful in the search for cyberlove. Chat rooms on both the Internet and other online services have enjoyed mixed levels of success, but some have gained worldwide attention.
McNabb says she doesn’t cruise IRC in hopes of finding a mate; she has a boyfriend already. He, too, is an IRC user. Still, McNabb likes the fawning adulation she gets on the Internet. In the past year, she says, she has been “hit on” by countless men (she tells them she’s “taken”). On one occasion, she says, she was propositioned by a woman. (McNabb politely declined.)
Berlin, who is still single, says she’s not actively looking for romance. Still, she admits, she’s keeping an open mind. “If it happens, it happens,” Berlin says. “It seems to be the underlying thing about IRC—finding love.”
The tough thing about finding love in a chat room is also the thing that makes it the most tantalizing: the anonymity. Playing the Internet field is like participating in a massive quiz game. One of the unwritten rules of IRC, for example, is that it is impolite to ask questions about gender. If you want to know if a user is a man or a woman, you have to figure it out for yourself. The name of the game is deduction.
That means, of course, that the 18-year-old female with whom you’ve been chatting for the past hour could turn out to be a 40-year-old man. On the Internet, no one knows whether or not you’re a dog. On the Internet, every dog can have his or her day.
With all the traffic on the love-chat channels, confusion is inevitable. While you are searching for Mr. or Ms. Right, almost 7,000 other people may be out there trolling as well. On a busy night, when dozens of people join in on the same channel, the screen can become one great, overwhelming torrent of scrolling text. In such cases, it’s nearly impossible to find a mate—there’s no time for a private chat or any intimacies. It’s just too loud in the room.
The sheer number of channels dedicated to love and romance is staggering. About a third of all IRC channels—including #teenlove, #valentine, #singles and #gayromance—are targeted at people in search of relatively traditional romance. Elsewhere, the chat rooms exist for one reason and one reason only—sex.
To a new net-savvy generation, IRC is, in some instances, becoming a bit like a seedy bar: a haven for lounge lizards seeking sexual gratification in whatever form they can find it. There is a great proliferation of sex-oriented channels on IRC, including #bdsm, #sex, #hottub and #hotsex. These are the channels that harbor “netsex” or “cybersex.”
Tap tap tap.
“There,” says Paul Roberts, cigarette dangling out of his mouth. “That should get them.”
With a few keystrokes, he has instructed his computer to hunt down and disconnect every user on the #kidsex chat channel. He sits back, pleased with himself.
“It’s disgusting,” he explains. “Netsex is one of the worst things to hit IRC in the past two years. I have problems with the entire concept.
“For instance, I’m supposed to pretend to have sex with someone I don’t even know? It’s just a bunch of people jerking off for no good reason.”
The sexual revolution of the ’70s led to an unprecedented openness about sexual subjects. The resulting trend toward “casual sex” in the early ’80s was short-circuited by the AIDS epidemic. Now, in the ’90s, the Internet generation is looking for safer alternatives—sexual release without the muss and fuss. Old-fashioned, risky casual sex has been replaced by “casual handsfree sex.”
The trend toward techno-sex first manifested itself in the “phone sex” industry, which didn’t exist, as a visible industry, until the 1980s, even though the phone had been around for a long time. Now Internet users have access to a wide variety of outlets that provide sexual services. By far, the most popular of these services is “netsex”; one of the reasons it’s popular is because, unlike phone sex, it’s free.
In a netsex encounter, no voices are heard. Instead, the lovemaking consists entirely of elaborate, typed descriptions of sexual intercourse, tapped out in real time, often lasting for hours.
In most cases, the male partner brings up the subject of intercourse. Sometimes it’s the female who takes the initiative, but, since there are fewer female chatline users than there are males, the net-mating process can resemble a large beehive, with the women having their pick of the men. Sometimes, there is a little sweet talk and well-mannered foreplay. Most of the time, however, men simply ask women if they want to have netsex.
Internet etiquette requires that, once two partners have decided to get intimate, they must seclude themselves in a private channel. These channels are locked from the inside, so that, once the two parties are inside the room, no one else can come in and disturb. At the same time, outsiders cannot be disturbed or insulted by what goes on behind the channel’s locked door.
Once the door is locked, the encounter usually proceeds with each person giving a detailed personal physical description of him or herself. The range of detail can be intricate or simple—nothing more than color of hair or color of eyes. Nothing, however, has to be true. Users simply proceed by describing, as meticulously as possible, their role in the fantasy encounter.
Internet users insist that, even though some exhibitionists do indulge in having sex in the public areas of the channels, most users respect the rules. “IRC is largely sexual,” says Berlin. “But not from my point of view.”
When it comes to sex, Berlin likes to hang out in channels such as #bdsm and #femdom. Even there, she says the channels aren’t necessarily filled with blatant netsex; most of the time, the action consists of a bunch of bored people telling dirty jokes. She does admit, though, that she has stumbled upon some rougher activity.
“It seems challenging,” she says, remembering some the encounters she has “witnessed.”“You would definitely have to have a good imagination to come up with things like that.”
As harmless as netsex may seem, it can have its annoying moments, just like real-life sex. Many users—especially females—say they’ve been harassed by guys who simply will not leave them alone. Even on the Internet, there are boors.
“I’ve had guys message me privately, telling me they were masturbating at the moment,” says Berlin. “I just ignore them, mostly. Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, I might play along with them for a bit, but usually I tell them to go away.”
Roberts has never solicited netsex —he says he doesn’t like the concept—and he says that its existence has led to some awkward moments for him. “I was chatting with a girl, and had to leave the room for a moment,” he recalls. “When I came back, she had...”
He pauses.
“Well, started without me. You should have seen some of the things on that screen! I had to just bullshit my way out of it. Eventually, I had to [hang up] on her.”
IRC and chat rooms are like one enormous, non-stop soap opera. All the elements are there: friendship, bitter enemies, love and sex. Thousands of people participate in writing the screenplay every day, but no one ever provides a byline.
Fantasies on the net, just like fantasies in real life, extend from the lightest and the happiest to the darkest and the most depraved.
The Internet is a world unto itself, not just because it covers the entire globe but because it provides each person with his or her own impenetrable environment. Its only boundaries are the boundaries set by the users themselves. It is a fantasy world, and the user is merely a daydreamer. It provides companionship of the loneliest sort.
Tap tap tap.
There’s another flash of light. The bar suddenly reappears from nowhere.
The woman in black sits down beside the man in a trench coat. She gazes straight into his eyes and takes a slow sip of her martini. She carefully places it on the table and smiles. The man touches the brim of his hat and returns the smile.
He places his stogie in an ashtray. Smoke curls around them.
Then the two fade off into the darkness, together.
Then the two fade off into the darkness, together.
