When I first went on a computer at the age of 5 or 6, I was in the United States. Computers then were of a dirty white colour, the keyboard was bulky and heavy; the monitor was of an immense size and weight and the desktop had less than 500MB of memory ram; had only the basic colours; and to think that its memory was ALOT less than 100 GBs is astonishing.
It makes me laugh when I think about how I was even alive when computers were at those very basic stages and how they are now. I couldn't help, but play on the windows 'Paint' application for hours on end making mickey mouse shapes and drawings of my house and family. I thought it was the most amazing thing.
When I discovered the internet, it was like love at first sight: an escape from the real world into the virtual world and even into some elses. At first, I used the internet for school research. Then my dad introduced me to online gaming and my school friends introduced me to Myspace.
I remember the first online game I was addicted to was called 'Medal of Honor: Allied Assault'. It was only a demo and with only three servers between everyone that owned the demo. There were clans of people that knew eachother and eventually I would be part of one of them.
They didn't have voice chat in that game as they do now in most online gaming, but in-game chat. People would occasionally say 'hi' or comment on how well your shot was. The next time you see each other in the same server, conversations start; you get into their clan; and meet other people whom you will never actually meet in real life, but talk to on a regular basis about yourself. Throw in a few jokes. It becomes more than just a game: it's a meeting place aswell.
Then there was Myspace. Everyone had one when I was in school. You wanted the most friends, people added bands to get their number friends up. Then, people would add you even though they didn't talk to you in person! People would post up their hottest pictures of themselves in the most revealing outfit. Then you would search online to make your profile all cool with html codes which also created a mass of spam. You'd try and get people to comment.
I didn't really like myspace and all around it just seemed like a competition.... and would cause fights between friends on who was #1 in their top friends list. I would comment here and there, but it wasn't about a 'typical conversation' like "hi. how are you?" it was more of a "duddeee just thought i'd say hi. pics are hot. see u at skoolio homie." Occasionally, I would find myself on my sisters profile calling her a "freak" just for fun.
Myspace became my worst enemy when people started blogging and putting up edited pictures of me. It is insanely humiliating and not really anything Myspace can do to stop any of it except maybe ban the profile, but it is so easy to just get a new one that they can post it up again and add everyone back. People could harrass you publicly on your own profile if you didn't set it to private. Your mum could easily make up a fake account and you'd accept the friend request because hey, the more friends, the more popular you seem to be. Then she could check out the pictures you didn't want her to see in the first place.
During the Myspace era, I also had a bebo which was mostly for my family. At first, I had created the Bebo as a page dedicated to the love of my current girlfriend, and had not set the profile prviacy to private. Little did I know that my older brother and sister and my mother would be the first ones to add me as a friend on Bebo. Anyone could have seen that information. They would have figured out I was gay, but that was how my family first started having speculations about it and my denial began. I didn't care if anyone else had seen it, but they did. After that, I had been extra cautious on what I wrote about myself on my page.
Now that I have moved countries. I moved on in my gaming and social networks. Today, I don't have a myspace or bebo and I don't play Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Instead, I own a Facebook and a Twitter. 2 rising popular social networks today. When I first got a facebook, it wasn't that popular and peopel continued to use Myspace, then gradually, I lost interest in myspace and the amount of friends I had on Facebook grew faster and it still continues to grow.
As soon as you meet someone at parties for the first time or out in the town, they most likely if they know your name and remember what you look like, stalk you down on facebook and add you as a friend. Casually commenting on statuses or commenting on photos or on your wall now and again. Instead of putting up, not only hot pictures of yourself, but people can take pictures of you and "tag" you for all to see. Glamerous or not. Maybe they are baby pictures or pictures of your first night out that you actually DID want to share with everyone else. It gives people a chance to see you grow and look at over time.
You can also get people "Facebook stalking" you. They check up on your profile to see what people are saying on your wall/photos/posts to find out more about you. They study and continue to check up creepily on your updated facebook statuses to find out what you are doing so maybe they can track you down now or later.
It becomes an addiction to constantly update people by typing up a new status. THen you comment on other people's if they make you smile or make you sad. It is difficult not to check the homepage for notifications of your own. I know when it says somone has commented on my wall, I do feel special that someone took their time to go to my home page and actually type something for me to see, especially if it is someone I want to talk to. It might also be an old friend whom I haven't talk to in years decide to talk to me to catch up especially since I had moved country, my old friends had all split up to different parts of the world and social networks like Facebook were only means of communication that was free and guaranteed to reach the correspondent if they checked their profile regularly.
I have had no problems with sharing the imformation I already do on facebook. I don't give out my exact location, but just pinning down a city. I accept/add people I have met before both/either online or offline. Every friend I have added on my personal profile page, I have heard them speak before because my online gaming friends are on it too.
Recently, I have been playing Left 4 Dead on the computer online for the past 6 months. Of course, in every game, you learn the maps and the basic tactics of fighting. You try and master the controls to then eventually face everyone online against skills. People did remember me and I then became part of their clan. I started to talk to some of them outside of the game and began playing other games with them and eventually met every week at a certain time to play online together. They then found their way onto my Facebook. We have never met face to face, but they are a really cool group of people. They never have harassed me or asked me for any personal details. I never had a problem with them.
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