What's fascinating about Facebook and Friendster isn't finding out which indie bands your kindergarten best friend is currently listening to. It isn't finding out who your friends are friends with--the lists of "friends" tend to include actual friends as well as people who were, well, kindergarten best friends, people you met once and will never see again, etc. No, what's fascinating is the day-by-day change of sexual orientation many people seem to go through. Aside from the surprisingly large number of people claiming bisexuality (did they mean to click that they wanted friends of either sex?), what's interesting to watch is how many people change their minds about their gayness, straightness, or bi-ness with an alarming frequency. I've seen people switch in all directions, with gay to bi to straight being perhaps the oddest.
I'm sure that people have always changed their minds about these things on a week-by-week, or even day-by-day, basis, and that coming out, or in some cases, coming in, is a slow process with many moments of confusion. But now, with these online networking/dating/what have you services, you can know what gender a person's in the mood for at any given minute, only to check later in the day to see if it's changed. Too much information, at times, but nevertheless a compelling way to waste time on the internet.
What does predatory behavior via deception have to do with tracking changes in sexual orientation?
ReplyDeleteIf men who do online impersonations of girls stop at chat, then, theoretically, this is nothing more than a mind game and possibly harmless. Occasionally one of these girlie men will materialize out of the ether to attack a real girl. However, if a person seeking friends/dates on Friendster too-frequently announces changes of his/her mind about his/her own orientation, this suggests, at worst, an excess of honesty, or revelation taken to the point of silliness. No harm done.
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