Love in the chat room

It really makes a column writer feel good about to receive  e-mail, even if the ritual of answering each one is time-consuming. I have been able to answer more than half of the 36 I received for my last column, and am grateful for them and the suggestions/comments they gave in relation to the evolution of Internet law.

One of them, from Gayle Toribio Peltman, a Filipino-American based in Minneapolis who works as a store manager, inquired about the security of Internet chat rooms. She’s a single lady in her mid-40s who is looking for a Filipino. She was as frank as that. That’s one of the reasons for this article. Thus, she inquired about the possibility of a chat romance for her.

Chat romances are gaining momentum. There are so many stories now of couples who met online in a chat room, then met offline after about six months of online flirtation and liked what each one saw in person. After an exchange of pictures online, they enjoyed each other’s company and conversation, commenced dating and got married. Those are the beautiful stories!

There are, however, horror stories when trust turns into terror. That’s the story of Patricia, who had gotten a divorce from her abusive, chauvinistic husband of 11 years, and decided that it was time to find love once more. Patricia is a 50-year-old professional who joined one of the most popular online dating sites, AmericanSingles.com.

She found herself communicating with a man named Eric. After all the online chats and telephone flirtations through a period of about a year, Eric invited Patricia to visit him at his expense. Being already extremely comfortable with their existing situation online, and liking the picture he sent, she agreed to accept his offer and flew to be with him. Eric met her at the airport, and seemed even more handsome than his online pictures. Being a busy lawyer specializing in mercantile law, he drove her to the hotel of his choice, and had breakfast with her over exciting, very seductive conversation. He told her to get settled in the hotel room for he would be coming back at noon.

Eric came back an hour late bringing with him all sorts of “kinky” paraphernalia, from chains to steel headgear to handcuffs with jeweled keys, etc. Patricia, who had taken a shower and used her best cologne to smell as good as possible, was shocked. Eric promised not to use the handcuffs and to be gentle. As the lovemaking progressed, Eric got carried away, produced a steel whip from somewhere that she never saw when he arrived, and started to whip her naked body with it. Patricia somehow managed to get her robe on and rushed out of the room to the elevator. When hotel officials went to the room, Eric was no longer in sight and he’d left his sex paraphernalia on the bed and the floor.

It was, of course, a traumatic experience for Patricia, the 50-year-old divorceé and professional who only wanted to find a new love. Of course, she had to pay for the room before taking the next plane home. Changing all of her contact addresses and numbers, Patricia decided to contact a therapist for advice because of a nervous condition that subsequently afflicted her.

Patricia’s story has been replicated many times over, in many countries all over the world that are globally interconnected through the Internet, crossing oceans and borders almost as fast as the speed of light. These “trust-turning-into-terror” stories can be frightening, resulting in dangerous stalkers who become obsessed with online partners that get frightened away, mentally unstable and just plain crazy predators galore, lunatics that think they are God’s greatest gift to the female gender, macho men who cannot take “no” for an answer, etc.

But the statistics remain. Culled from Nielsen/Net Ratings, the statistics show that one out of three Internet users now use the Web to meet a potential dating partner. And that the Internet is the third most popular way to get a date, the first two being through friends and in the workplace. The same ratings source reveals that women are more likely to looking for friendships and/or true love online than men. This is a disturbing statistic because the greater number of victims is female, of course.

Trust can be prevented from turning into terror if chat rooms and online users, especially females, exercise more care and learn to be more deliberate in making contact. The effect of communicating through chat rooms is immediate. If there is something in a profile given to you that raises a red flag somewhere in your brain, just move on and do not cultivate the chatter.

Perhaps it is best to Google the person you have become interested in because this can give you important clues as to what the individual is like, more so if he or she has a personal or professional website or has posted and been profiled on the Web. It is possible that you will make some discoveries contradicting what you have been told. Or perhaps he has lied about his true height, adding two or three more inches to it — this should not be forgiven no matter how sexy and good-looking he is online. He is a liar — period! Especially if what you are after is a true and solid online or chat-room romance, it is best to tell the truth, more importantly about something as fundamental as your real name. It really depends on the trust that has already developed between the two of you.

But the most important matter to look into are criminal records in order to find out if that good-looking, sexy online proponent smiling at you in the chat room is a sex predator or offender and could be a potential chat stalker should you withdraw from further flirtatious chats in the chat room.

Criminal background checks of online dating subscribers are worthwhile when done through reliable databases. Because of the phenomenal expansion of e-commerce, we can now see a growing and increasing disconnect between the companies providing goods and services and their customers via the Web. In the matter of online dating, this is an especially important dimension because of the very real danger of personal injury and harm, as well as even death to the chat room’s romantic users and online subscribers.

In e-commerce as well as with romantic subscribers, it has to be borne in mind that no database is perfect. And no screening is foolproof, even if one had access to a database containing every arrest, conviction and jail record. Especially within the Philippine context where, to my mind, criminal databases are still unreliable but as we speak, the effort is being undertaken to right the present situation.

In the United States, do not for a moment think that their criminal databases are comprehensive or even accurate. This is simply not the case with the FBI’s databases, for example. In 2003, Rapsheets.com warned about this, so that a subscriber to the site was quoted as saying that she is for criminal background checks at online dating sites or those obtained at chat rooms, etc. It turns out that the friend of this subscriber dated a man she met in a chat room, and discovered too late that he had an extremely bad temper. When she checked, she found out that, along with his good looks, he also had a violent criminal background. This lady now puts a profile on several sites before she ventures into them, such as eHarmony, Yahoo!, True.com, etc.

“Internet Dating Coach” Melanie Dobson founded a company she runs online at www.theinternetdatingcoach.com, where she offers seminars and workshops as well as individual coaching. According to her, most of her clients are looking for a long-term, monogamous relationship. Her story began in the summer of 2001. After a foray into online dating, where the men she was able to talk to in the chat room effectively presented themselves, she went on several dates with a number of them, ending in a serious relationship with one that ended, however, after two and half years, but who remains a good friend. Soon after that, she founded this thriving company, which has been praised as a “sorely needed training center.”

For many of us, however, though we still believe in what Robert Browning said in 1885: “Take away love and our earth is a tomb,” there is no substitute for the good, old-fashioned way where someone says, “Come live with me and be my love.” Christopher Marlowe probably never meant for this classic line to be said in the chat room, online.

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Thanks for your e-mails sent to jtl@pldtdsl.net.