Siralin wrote:
Killpackoz wrote:
I was dating Kyrin via wow for about 4months before we broke up i contacted some of her family i knew and found out this. and yes i thought she was a woman too.
This is Kyrin in the Obituaries. The person you knew was in fact a woman but in reality this was him.
If this isn't some troll...this could get interesting.
Ok, I'm not going to believe this one way or another, unless and until further actual trustworthy proof comes up. I don't really expect it to, so I'm going to treat this like an interesting hypothetical situation.
This is kind of why I think parents need to teach their children about "net savviness", and monitor their early online activities very closely. To emphasize the teaching that you can interact with people on the net in a fun way, and become emotionally close to them, but ALSO always to be able to think very hard about what HARD real life data you have about an online person. To behave in a way with your online friends that treats them as they present themself, and yet at the very same time behave in a way that also protects yourself with basic physical and emotional safety for in the case that they are not who and how you think of them.
Have you voiped with someone? Webcammed? is there some sort of other outside, parallel information that agrees with their stories? What sort of pictures are alterable/altered, and what probably aren't? What sort of confirming, parallel information are in pictures?
While at the same time as trying to keep people safe from "stranger danger", and net fraud, I also want people to remain free to HAVE internet personas that are different from their real life ones. I'll talk about myself to use as a single example of the great good that I think net personas can do. Online communities have been a complete and utter godsend to my sanity in two ways. Firstly, I'm badly stricken with a physical illness. In "RL", socialising often revolves around the job you have, the physical activities you are doing day to day and for fun. Also the way you look physically affects people's opinions of you greatly. My long term illness has stripped away almost all the usual things and activities that people hang their self-esteem on.
Online, people don't see first off how little I do, what I look like. Their mind fills in the blanks, and assumes all sorts of things. We get to connect over the things we DO have in common, and then later, as we trust each other more, we can start telling more of the truth about ourselves. Or not, as the case may be, TLW. ^-^
The second sanity saver for me is the wonderful filter that the net provides for me as a person with a lot of overlapping phobias and mental/emotional illnesses. For someone with Social Phobia, the ability to explode all over the place with behaviour and conversation that would choke in your throat in a roomful of "real" people is one of the most healing, liberating experiences ever. And I'm sure that many of us online have been thoroughly entertained by Socialphobes let loose to flower, or to run manically riot.
In a hypothetical situation, I cannot approve of a gay person cyboring or having an online relationship with a straight person who has a false idea of the sex of the other person. I perhaps can understand that strong temptation that a real feeling of love, or lust might have to prompt someone to do that to a straight, but I can't condone that deception morally, as a hypothetical. I perhaps could forgive someone for it in the end, if I loved them enough, if they could be forgiven by the person they duped.
I kind of think of net personas in the same way I think about sex, I guess. There are some nasty STDs out there, we need to know how to play safe. But the benefits of sex way outweigh the risks of STDs, if you take some sensible precautions.
Back to Kyrin. I only knew Kyrin as a fairly new but energetically entertaining poster on the OOT. She was enthusiastically sexually flirty, and I enjoyed that. IF Kyrin was a man in RL, that surprises me, but it doesn't shock me. As a bi woman, it doens't bother me that I might have been turned on by what was really a guy, pretending to be a girl. It is understandable to me if any straight males on the OOT might feel deeply uncomfortable about that, on the other hand.
My attitude to Kyrin remains pretty much unchanged by this hypothetical. I thought she (now he) was a great new poster, bringing some zip to the forum. I enjoyed her (now his) company. And I think it's a rotten shame she (he) died. It's awful for all her/his family and close friends. I'm still not much personally affected by her/his death, because I didn't know her/him well. I merely regret her/his absence as a lively new poster. What does remain, and still remains, is the remembrance of those who posted in this thread who knew "Kyrin" well, had interacted with her/him lots, and were personally very sad and upset to lose her/him.
Their grief briefly but really made me feel very sorry for their loss indeed.
Edited, May 8th 2009 7:48am by Aripyanfar Edited, May 8th 2009 7:52am by Darqflame
