How Gays Say Goodbye on the Internet
By Andy Heath
I have always found it to be a sad problem that gay men that talk on the Internet seem to have this mental block against becoming good friends. The first time gay men talk in a chat room, they often click. Sometimes they will talk about things of interest, common opinions in politics, common hobbies, or other commonalities that make them both think they will eventually become good friends.
There are two problems with Internet bonding that I have found that often prevent gay men from becoming good friends. First, no one can read body language or hear a tone of voice over the Internet. I once heard a statistic that said that body language and voice tone make up 93% of communication, while the vocabulary we use actually only comprises the other 7%. When we talk on the Internet, it is very rare that we fully get the true gist of what our conversation partner is saying to us. The fact that one or both gay men do not understand what the other is really saying over the Internet is cause for some very nasty misunderstandings. When there is a misunderstanding, it is common for one or both men to simply dismiss the other as an Internet jerk and therefore someone not worth talking to.
The second problem with Internet bonding is that when such a misunderstanding occurs, the offended gay man rarely ever allows his chat partner to explain the confusion. Sometimes there was simply no way to fully explain the misunderstood point simply because the Internet chat rooms limit them to only 7% of the communication tools at their disposal. But the fact is that once these misunderstandings occur, the offended party commonly just clicks the ignore button and thus, perhaps several months of discussion become a waste.
What can be done about the problem of misunderstandings in Internet chat rooms? Perhaps nothing can be done about them except to start meeting other people in real places instead of striking up conversations on the Internet. I have found that the ones that are most likely to spend inordinate amounts of time chatting on the Internet also lack the courage to make friends in public because they fear rejection. The irony of that fear is that rejection is far less likely to come from talking to people in person than from the Internet, where the chatters do not have to face the victims of their rejection.
These days I sometimes find myself going into Internet chat rooms for gay men for a few minutes at a time, though to be honest, I rarely ever spend any significant amount of time there because of the insidious problem of the way gay men say goodbye on the Internet.
