Campfyre Stories

It’s a conversation that I’ve had with a number of people, few of whom ever understand what I’m talking about.  Internet crushes are a new thing in this technological age.  It’s something different from a romantic crush or even a platonic crush and I don’t know if there’s any terminology in place to define it.

I’ll admit it, I’m addicted to the internet.  I rely on it for most of my communication, job searches, bill paying, banking and even, to a certain extent, socialization.  I play MMOGs as well as sites like Free Arcade, Pogo and NewGrounds for games.  Currently, though, my favorite time sink on the internet has got to be posting on message boards.  Specifically these days, the Stratics Off-Topic forum.I discovered message boards (and my addiction to them) when I started playing my first MMORPG, The Sims Online (TSO).  From there it was only a matter of time before I branched out and started finding bigger and better places to post my thoughts about, quite frankly, everything under the sun.  In learning about what it means to post in message board communities, I discovered a strange phenomenon.  I found myself becoming attracted to several people who posted with me.This surprised me, to say the least.  I wasn’t looking to be attracted to these people, in fact, there was little going on to lead me to that point.  There wasn’t a lot of flirting or playing around with the idea of internet relationships.  In fact, there wasn’t much, if any relationship for there to be.  We played the same game, had strong opinions about it, not necessarily agreeing, but there was something about the way some of these people said whatever they were saying that somehow struck me as attractive.I see this continuing in most forums where I post.  There’s attraction in some situations, but not in all of them.  Even the people who I follow avidly may not be one of my “Internet crushes”, there’s always something extra about those people.  It’s like walking into a crowded room and making that intense “I know you” eye contact across the room.It’s a difficult thing to explain.  Most of the time people think that I have romantic designs on these crushes, but that’s really not the point of the whole thing.  It’s simply a matter of almost having created a second, internet-specific part of myself, not me, but an extension, who has developed her own identity over the past years.  She can woo and flirt and develop that crush into something more, but the real life aspect rarely, if ever, comes into play.