Welcome to the sex world of the new millennium.
A new dimension of human experience is rapidly opening up.... However, the experience created by computers and computer networks can in many ways be understood as a psychological "space." When they power up their computers, launch a program, write email, or log on to their online service, users often feel - consciously or subconsciously - that they are entering a "place" or "space" that is filled with a wide array of meanings and purposes. Many users who have telneted to a remote computer or explored the World Wide Web will describe the experience as "traveling" or "going someplace." Spatial metaphors - such as "worlds," "domains," or "rooms" are common in articulating online activities. On an even more basic psychological level, users often describe how their computer is an extension of their mind and personality, a "space" that reflects their tastes, attitudes, and interests. In psychoanalytic terms, computers and cyberspace become a type of "transitional space" that is an extension of the individual's intrapsychic world. (Suler, May, 1996)
Cyberspace brings you face-to-face with who you are at your root (or "/root" as we say in computer lingo). All social interaction combines our inner and outer worlds, but cyberspace provides an especially versatile medium for externalizing the internal.
While some virtual spaces are down-to-earth realms, others lean toward fantasia. In places like MOOs [MUD (Multi-User Domain) Object Oriented] and on the Palace (a type of graphical MOO with sound), you can create an imaginary world and write programs to make your fantasy objects do whatever you want. Then other people interact with your inventions, bringing them to life. It allows people to script a world, live in it, and bring others to live in it too; the VR and RL emotional realms run parallel. I've dredged up my wildest dreams and set them in motion. I didn't realize until later that I was externalizing my psyche and showing people my innermost desires and distresses.
I once needed to speak to an online woman about planning an event. When my requests for a private conversation went unanswered, I sensed a dismissal of my existence, possibly a historic feeling stemming from early interactions with my mother. Though I later learned the woman had just started a paying online job and was too flustered with new responsibilities to attend to acquaintances, I nevertheless ripped into her. When she greeted my cyber arrival with: Hi, girlfriend! I answered: Cut the hypocrisy, bitch. I'll take no more bullshit from you.
Whoa -- the anger I dredged up and flung through the modem was a shocking discovery.
We have an inner life that while having constant exchanges with the outer environment has an enduring life of its own. It becomes the essence of the individual. Its organization is what we call the "inner self." (Arieti, 1974)
The motivation behind cyber actions comes from within each individual cybernaut. Whether posing as a TV star or as a rodent, beneath it all we are ourselves. Often when online, I experienced a frightening flash of insight. I catch a glimpse of my inner demons and feel their power. Yikes, what is this lust I fee l? What is this longing, this torment? There haven't been many times when I've exhibited embarrassing out-of-control behaviors, but cyberspace has roused me to that point. Once, my cyber boyfriend Jagwire had misdirected a private message meant for a female friend and had sent it to me by mistake. In fury, I shut off the modem and insulted him in email for a week. After looking back at the things I'd said and cringing in shame, we made up. I apologized and confessed to being so overwhelmed by passion that I'd behaved like an idiot. In truth, I didn't know if Jagwire had six heads and a beer belly. With his home in California and mine in New York, we'd never met in RL. Nevertheless, I'd been totally captivated, and when I suspected unfaithfulness I was crushed. Neither my substantial past love affairs nor my scholastic degrees had affected my romantic idealization of this person I knew only as a name on a computer screen.
Raw unalloyed emotion -- that was my reaction to an imagined affront. I couldn't avoid the fact that what had sparked the outburst existed only in my mind. Jealousy resided in me, ready to be awakened by the firing of a neurotransmitter associated with who-knew-what memory. Perhaps I had reconnected to an old feeling of rejection from my mother. Perhaps an old nerve had been hit that said, "You don't care about my feelings." Perhaps his mispage had made me feel that I was too worthless for him to be careful where he sent his messages. My emotional reaction had little to do with him -- it came from the previous events in my life that made me "me." My behavior in the virtual relationship followed patterns I'd established in RL relationships, some imprinted back in childhood.
Frequently, online interactions hit a nerve that makes me behave in irrational ways. I have to recognize the reaction as something within me, especially since the person who recognize the reaction as something within me, especially since the person who "caused" the reaction is someone I've never met, whose voice I've never heard, and whose age or sex I can't verify. I've spent so much time in cyberspace, I see the world through the eyes of a CPU (a computer's Central Processing Unit), and I've grown to appreciate that CPU eyes can be a window into one's soul. I've looked deeply at myself through these eyes and have descended to the core of the database that is me. Sometimes, when I've been hurt by something a stranger did online, I've found that the original blueprint of the scene was created with my mother decades ago, now replayed in an updated cyberspace version. When an online character who is supposed to care about me acts in a way that seems unmindful, it triggers the response of feeling "invisible," how I always felt around my mother.
During adolescence, we awaken sexually. Sexuality is a basic motivator, as strong as the need for food and sleep. It should surprise no one that sexuality is a major force behind online communications. It comes out, often unexpectedly, because we are sexual beings. We become attracted to a name on the screen regardless of the fact that we've never met the person in the flesh. A romantic episode happens early in a traveler's foray into cyberspace. With love comes sex, and then an easy slip into anonymous cyber slutting. Net sex seems so safe. After all, it's not real.