Thursday, September 20, 2007

My Multiple Personalities

I feel like I am going through a bit of a personality crisis. On almost a daily basis I get invitations to join one online community or another. Orkut, Classmates, Facebook, LinkedIn, Multiply, Friendster, MySpace and on and on. And as if those communities were not enough, there are communities within communities. Each of those communities gives me the chance to reinvent myself, to be funny, intelligent, artistic, business-like or whatever. It is like a virtual DNA pool that can be reconstructed on a whim. I feel like a Cyber Sybil. I have so many personalities out there I can't keep track of them, much less the friends or enemies that those personalities have made. It boggles the mind... But that does not stop me from continuing. It's like a drug. How many friends can I collect? How many people will mark me as a hottie? Write on my wall? Leave me a scrap? Propose marriage?

In fact, in India I saw lots of ads for sites that specialize in getting people married and so I decided to register myself at SimplyMarry.com just to see what would happen. I was curious what my market desirability would be and who would contact me. I know I should not contaminate the database, but looking at some of the pictures and profiles there, I would say that had been done long ago... So I created a profile but did not include any picture and over the span of the last 2 months, I have received exactly 1 response from a woman in the UK. She's 39, wheatish and moving to India soon. Today, I decided to post a picture... And not just any picture, but one of me on the beach in Lakshadweep with my hair spiky and tattoo on display to see how my rough and sexy surfer/beach bum look goes over.

I have had profiles on other Indian sites and the response was overwhelming. If I was online I would have over 100 messages within an hour, my mailbox filling up faster than I could read them and empty it out. Most of them were pledging eternal devotion, claiming true love and inviting me to move to some place I had never heard of before. I would get some real doozies like this one:

i love u....
donno y,but i seriously do...
u luk like a real trust worthy guy,n a guy i was alwaz lukin 4...
y don u meet me atleast 4 once....m sure ul nvr b disappointed...
reply anything,but plz atleast say sumthing...

Or even this one:

hye my sweetdream really i like u very much...so i do propose u..i know i am to far to u & i can sent ony 2 messege in a day so why i do my one messaege west to sent u..but actualy in different because its doesn`t metter that everyone can get like self...but metter is that who is can impress u & whom u like....so my beloved i do just sare my feeling with u that i like u very very much & i would like to met u one day in delhi if u do travel for india...i don`t know u will like me or not but i like u its true...maybe lot of guys like me but i don`t like them but u r my real choice...so if u here i can be very close to u...yaap i need some close to me because i am alone in my life...so i looking who can understand my feeling

They all gave me a warm and squishy feeling inside and I just felt they were all too good to keep them to myself and so I started sending them to friends of mine in a "Message of the Week" email. But when I could not respond, that Indian hospitality turned ugly. I would get messages only a couple minutes apart from someone and then get told to fuck off after they had sent me the fifth message in 10 minutes that I was unable to respond to. Of course, a little while later they were giving me another chance at love.

1 comment:

  1. as much as i dislike you, i actually like your writing!!!

    ReplyDelete