A story

It’s been a really long time since I felt “tfw no gf”, in an abstract sense I mean. Of course I’ve had oneitis, recently in fact, which indirectly led to me starting this blog. That general feeling though, not since maybe a couple years ago or longer even. I think actually it’s around the time I developed a friendship/ weird thing with this girl online. Funnily enough we met on /r9k/, just before both of us turned 18 because we both have a birthday in the same month. This was in late 2014, so a bit more than a couple years actually. I remember the thread, it was one of those ones where you fill in this template. If you have spent a significant amount of time on the board you would probably recognise it if you saw it. You fill in some basic information about yourself and then the bottom half about your “ideal partner”. I never actually filled in the template, I was just scrolling through the thread and seeing if there were any girls. Of course there always are a few, their posts stick out like a sore thumb because they have ten times as many replies as the normal posts. We had a brief interaction in the thread and for whatever reason got along well enough that she gave me her e-mail address and we started talking there.

Now I have to say I would never do something like that now, not because I’m any less lonely but something about that behaviour feels pathetic to me. It felt pathetic then too to be fair, so maybe I am a little more content with loneliness now idk. The point is, I was younger (not even 18 yet) and while I had been visiting the site as a whole for a while I wasn’t really a regular on /r9k/ yet. I still felt kind of like a newfag, I was still careful before I made a post and generally probably posted way less often. I still hadn’t fully been immersed in the “culture”, if you can call it that. I certainly hadn’t got to the point I was in early 2016, when I left the board entirely for almost a year (around the same time as I stopped talking to this girl actually), where I felt like the board had almost become a home to me. I had to leave, because I knew it was having a really toxic effect on my state of mind, but it was difficult. I stayed away for a good year as well, and while that feeling remains it’s not quite the same, though neither is the board. I’ll always have quite fond memories of that period of time, of 2015. Although that might have something to do with the fact that it followed 2014, which was a really shit time for me.

I’m getting distracted though, what I’m saying is that this behaviour was something uncharacteristic of me. In fact I engaged in a lot of similar behaviour like it that whole year honestly. There was a period of a few months where I would go on omegle every night, and while it wasn’t really so I could try and talk to girls as I more enjoyed just chatting with the anons there, that was definitely also a motivator. I exclusively stuck to the r9k tags during the period of time I was there, and these threads would regularly hit bump limit so there was a small “community” and familiar faces I would speak to often. In fact there were quite a few creepshots taken of me and posted in those threads, and one or two ended up on the bigger graph images from the period. Occasionally I check the threads when I see one (they still appear from time to time, but never live long), and one with me on it was still being reposted a few months ago, so it’s not just me who remembers that period of time fondly. Regular compliments were nice too, I’ll be honest, I kind of pretended I didn’t but I really liked it when people would say nice things about me. Of course, I was incredibly insecure, and that definitely was part of why I spent so much time with these people. Even then I felt a little separate though, sure all of the regulars eventually got to recognise me but I still felt apart from them all in some way. It was like I was kind of forgettable, I was on the periphery of that whole scene. It’s weird because you’d basically go on and have a series of one-on-one conversations but the entire time the thread would be up and this more meta conversation would be going as well. You’d be talking to someone and then see a post by them in the thread. It was strange, for me anyway. There was also drama, and a lot of people wanted to talk on skype as well. I added a few of them, but for some reason there I was much more awkward and everyone gave up bothering and ghosted me as soon as I stopped going on omegle every night and being part of that whole scene.

It’s been a while now, so I don’t know if I have the timeline exactly right, but from what I remember I started going on omegle and chatting with the people there (often with my webcam on, of course) almost immediately after promising this girl that I would speak to her on camera/ video chat. See, going back a little, after a few days of talking over e-mail we eventually started chatting on skype because it was easier. I actually created an account just to talk to her, because up until this point I was really not into any of that kind of thing. I had been going to 4chan for years, but I never had any “online friends”, I never joined a forum where you have a username and recognisable identity, etc. I didn’t have a steam account, I only played vidya on console and mostly only used party chat and spoke to people I already knew irl from school. I did use social media while at school, but I deleted all of that the day I finished secondary school and still haven’t changed my perspective on it even though it has only become a far bigger thing in the life of your average westerner since then.

Oh, yes I remember now. At first she didn’t actually have a webcam, she had an older computer without one built in and had never bought one separately. So it wasn’t until after quite a couple months of chatting fairly regularly (I’d say that for the year or slightly longer we were talking we’d speak for an average of maybe five or six hours a day) that she was able to get one. Of course, we’d already sent a few photos of ourselves to each other at this point with messages and stuff. This is where I have to admit something that I really even now feel shitty about. See even though the original thread we met in was explicitly about finding a “partner”, very shortly after we first started talking and the subject came up she told me she wasn’t interested in finding a boyfriend. Now, I didn’t say anything about this and mirrored the sentiment. “Yeah, me neither” or something like that. Of course this wasn’t true, I was a 17/ 18 year old boy who had ruined every opportunity for intimacy ever given to him, but I did genuinely enjoy talking to her and while I until that point had been under the assumption that there was some kind of “thing” like that implied because of the circumstances of our first meeting, I didn’t mind that much. I had someone who was genuinely nice and who seemed to actually find me interesting and would go out of her way to talk to me. I was happy to have an actual friend especially as I was feeling like I was being left behind by the few friends I had irl. This conversation also happened after we’d been talking for a couple of weeks, so if I’d really cared so much I should have been more forward, but of course I didn’t yet.

I did eventually start to develop quite strong feelings for her though, shortly after this, despite not even knowing what she looked like yet. Then one evening after she had supposedly been drinking with her friends she half “confessed” her feelings for me over a bunch of skype messages and I did the same a few days later with this really long and looking back very cringy message to her. I didn’t explicitly say I wanted her to be my “internet girlfriend” or anything like that, it was more vague, but amazingly she responded saying she felt similarly and had after all been being honest that evening while drunk. So after that we shared some photos of ourselves and she decided to get a camera. This was also the first year my dad started this trend of leaving for a holiday for a few weeks so I can have the place to myself. He’d been away for a few days at a time, but I remember this time in particular as he was leaving for a few weeks which was longer than ever before.

It sounds like it was all going perfectly well for me, I’d have the place to myself so I would feel comfortable talking to her without anyone around to listen in on me. Because of course I never told anyone about this, well that’s not true I did mention her later to one friend but that’s it, something about the whole thing felt quite shameful to me. Kinda how I was saying earlier how it felt pathetic. Like I couldn’t get a girlfriend or even friends in real life, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I was talking to people online. I could write a whole post about this aspect of my psyche honestly, I’ve tried already actually. My pride I suppose, it’s the same reason I’ve never even considered online dating despite the fact that I know it could probably get me (anyone really) laid within a week. I don’t know why, but I guess at least unconsciously I’d rather remain a virgin than openly state that I want a partner/ relationship. To have to admit and ask for something, not just a gf but even help in any area of life, is incredibly difficult for me. I’m going to have to talk about this in much more detail some other time, because I’ve got so much more to say.

I know how it sounds as well, the paragraph above I mean. It reads like total cope, like something someone would say rather than admit to themselves they’re just unattractive. Maybe it’s true, I’ve got a lot wrong with me but being lacking in self awareness is not one of them. It’s very possible that the real unconscious motivation is for me to just avoid potential rejection. Again not just in “dating”, but in all areas of life. Like how I stopped going into school, and didn’t show up for all my exams, perhaps because I knew I was too stupid to pass them anyway. Or at least that I was scared of that being the case. I don’t think so though, well actually I do think that also is part of it but I don’t think my lack of success with girls/ women is because I’m unattractive. I hate talking about myself like this, because it’s easy for it to seem like I’m saying something about myself that I’m not, but I can think of several examples of females who were definitely attracted to me. Superficially I mean, but then after actually interacting with me and experiencing my criminally vulgar shyness as Morrissey once put it, they lose all interest. In fact tying back in to the actual topic of this particular entry, after we swapped photos the girl became noticeably more warm and friendly. Not that she hadn’t been before, but it’s funny that the opposite happened in my case. Which takes me back to what I was actually saying, the thing that I still feel bad about.

I know this is going to make me look like an awful person, but the moment I saw what she looked like I lost some interest. Speaking of superficiality right? I just wasn’t attracted to her and I couldn’t get past that. It’s not even that she wasn’t pretty, because she was and I said that to her at the time, but she was just quite different than I had imagined and it felt weird. I don’t mean I lost interest in talking to her, this was a couple months after we first started talking and we kept talking for a year almost after this. I know it might seem like I overuse the term, although it’s really more accurate to say I experience the feeling too much, but the oneitis I’d developed was before I even knew what she looked like. It really was because of the person herself, and so in my head I had naturally created an image of what she looked like. Kind of the exact reverse of the case from my first post on this blog, where I knew what the person looked like but created an imaginary personality. I’ve already told that story, but of course I knew some things about her and similarly I had a basic description from that original graph and some conversations about what this girl looked like which is what I used to manufacture this image in my head. Now ironically, I would say that the girl from more recently is probably less good looking, but something about being there in person makes that matter a whole lot less. I suppose it was more disappointment that she didn’t look like this imaginary character I’d made up in my head, than lack of attraction.

Anyway some part of me gave up on the idea of anything more than an internet friendship with this girl, but she didn’t feel the same way, or at least that’s how it seemed. I could very well be wrong and perhaps she was never interested in me. It doesn’t matter now. I think that part of my motivation for going to omegle in the first place was the same as it was for me checking that thread with the charts. So I kept putting off talking to her on video chat because I was worried it would be really awkward or something, in fact I never did in the end.. I never was going to initiate it and she never would either, but she did go in those threads and see people posting the creepshots they’d taken of me from omegle. Which she understandably was bothered by, and she’d get really upset and I would feel awful. The whole situation was a fucking mess, also after a while the conversations became less enjoyable too. The format, text messaging essentially, is really limiting and you can’t express emotion or humour well at all over text. There was a language barrier as well, she spoke/ wrote English well but as a second language (she was from Italy) and so while that wasn’t a problem at first, when trying to talk about more complicated things it became difficult. I know that I get people who read these blogposts that aren’t native English speakers, I wonder sometimes if some of the points I’m making are missed and how I can best prevent that while still expressing myself the way I feel works best.

I also started drinking quite a lot in this period, I’d just turned 18 after all and I started because it made it much easier to relax and be normal when on omegle. My dad went away three times that year, I remember I brought my mattress into the main room and basically only left it to get food or go and buy alcohol. I would stay up until 5 or 6am, because a lot of them were from the US and a different timezone, and wake up after midday the whole time. I was still in school at the time, but I maybe went in for four or five days over the entire few times he was away. Also, when I was drinking I would also be more relaxed talking to her, and we’d talk about meeting irl and her visiting me here. I never really expected it to happen, after all a flight nowadays is pretty easy to arrange and cheap, if we wanted to do something like that we would have. It’s not that I didn’t want her to visit, in fact I thought about it a lot and thought that it would be the thing that would save whatever it was we had. I suppose even then I was aware that my weird issue would disappear if I met her in person, because it would almost be like seeing her for the first time again.

I don’t need to go over every little detail of that period of time, my original plan for this post was actually a look back at last year, because we started talking again and I realised that without the context of who she was and what had been things wouldn’t make sense. I then started the post writing about something else, but maybe because she’s on my mind it ended up being about her anyway and now this has just become a look back at 2015 instead. I don’t know if I’m still going to do the one about last year, I don’t really like how this one came out, but I’ve written so much I don’t want to go back and start something completely new now. See, after a while it must have become clear to her I wasn’t as interested in talking. In fact one of the last important events from that whole situation illustrates it perfectly. She asked me one evening about that long post I’d made right at the beginning expressing my feelings for her, the one I’d sent before I even knew what she looked like. Out of the blue when we’d been talking about something entirely different, she just asked if I still felt the same way. I said I did, but it must have been obvious to her I wasn’t telling the truth because I just said something like “yeah sure, whatever”. Shortly after that, maybe a few weeks or just over a month, she stopped replying mid conversation. I’ve got to be honest I felt relieved, because by that point it had become a chore to talk with her. While at first I had really enjoyed it, gradually I realised how limited the scope of potential conversation was with her. Now ghosting someone is rather cowardly, but not even being able to do that and just continuing to talk to someone when you’ve begun to hate doing so like I did is even worse. So, I’m glad she did and it should have been left at that.

So going back to the start, I think after this point in my life I realised that a girlfriend wasn’t really what I wanted. I mean, the platonic ideal of the “girlfriend” is far from what I want. I’ve been trying to explain what I’m getting at here for nearly an hour and deleted all of it, I’m really struggling to explain myself. Here’s my best attempt, imagine an alternate universe where after sending me her photo for the first time she had turned out to be exactly the person I had originally pictured but in all other regards was exactly the same person. Of course instead of losing interest my feelings would have only intensified, but the person would have still been the same. Eventually it’d still be just as boring to talk, the greater effort I admittedly probably would have made to try and meet her irl would have been in spite of that. Who knows what might have happened, but if I had somehow ended up in a relationship with her I wouldn’t have grown to enjoy the conversations we had I’d have grown to put up with them. And this is the person I’ve probably been closest with, out of everyone I’ve ever known. If even talking to her became boring, then there might be no one for me. Because of course I’d rather have a girlfriend than be the lonely loser I am, but I haven’t daydreamed or fantasised about having a girlfriend since then. It’s not something I pine for like so many guys in similar situations to me do, and I know that while I’d feel better I’d still feel unsatisfied. That is what I’m trying to say, I think I finally got it. The thing is, after hours and hours every day for months eventually you run out of things to say.

There were a few other important things that happened that year, things that affected the development of my worldview I mean. Like a brief period where I became rather obsessed with Elliot Rodger, I’d read My Twisted World in early 2014 right after the shooting became international news, but then kind of forgot about him for long time. Then on /r9k/ he was talked about constantly and I kind of got pulled in to that world. Very close towards the end of that year there was a series of threads with a few hundred never before seen photos of him being dumped, and those threads (while they were active) are some of my favourite memories ever. I know, my life is a joke. Some other stuff as well, I just want to get this out now though. I’ve been reading through all my posts, from the start of this whole little project, over the last few days. I’m surprised by how good I think some of them are, usually anything I write sounds really cringe/ embarrassing even only a few days later. None of them are perfect, I think all of them have one or two things that are a little annoying, but generally speaking I’m really proud of some of them. In fact I feel a little like I’ve lost something, that there’s nothing quite as interesting or well written as the best few from the very start. This post is a total mess. I might try and put some kind of archive or something like it so that scrolling all the way back through everything I’ve written here isn’t the only way to see the older stuff.

It’s funny, she always encouraged me to write but I don’t think I’m a very good writer, I would just do an even worse job of expressing myself in any other medium. On the other hand she was always drawing, and I actually had some art of hers as my desktop background for a long time even after we stopped talking the first time. I thought about using it as the header image for this entry actually, but I’ve decided to do so without asking her wouldn’t be right, so that’s why I left it without one this time. See I’ve been tempted to send her a link to this blog a few times since starting, to show her that I finally decided to start writing like I said I wanted to, but now after this post that would probably be a really bad idea. I’m conflicted, maybe I’ve completely misunderstood things and the only way I’d find out would be to hear what she had to say. I don’t know how good her memory is, or if she’d be honest. Maybe feeling insulted by what I said about her, she’d just say whatever to try and hurt me back. I do think that she’s a good person, for the most part, certainly one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. I really do wish the best for her, she was always a little troubled. When we started talking again it was clear she was no longer interested either, in that way I mean. She clearly has feelings for someone else who she met since the first time we were speaking, and they actually lived in the same city so had met in person, and I suppose it was obvious I had some feelings for my co-worker even though I never said it to her. She would talk about him a lot, and when I got really upset about my co-worker leaving she could probably tell why it hurt so much. The conversation was more like something between two old friends, and at first it was really nice catching up and hearing about what she’d done in the time between talking. However, the exact same thing happened as the first time and after a few months it became a chore again and I started making excuses to not talk some days, and so did she I think. Then soon after she stopped bothering to reply, clearly sensing I had stopped enjoying talking to her again or because she had become equally bored with me.