[Tonchi]

For me, it's not about "hooking up" but about finding friendship and purpose through the internet. I was never looking for love or a mate online, but I happened to meet my best friend that way. Luisa and I "met" through ICQ back in early 1998 because we were part of the same online fan club. We have now known each other for more than 8 years but have never met in person. Except for the time I spent in Intensive Care, we have "talked" online every night of those 8 years, for about 2 hours but sometimes longer, have collaborated in a website which became extremely well known, started an internet business together, and now are working on getting her a visa so that I can sponser her for immigration to the USA. People in her country assume that we are either both lesbians or that she is successfully scamming me for money. (That's the kind of pathetic mentality where Luisa lives, in a totally crappy Third World country, as we have both written elsewhere on this forum.) People in my country who do not know the both of us either assume that I am being scammed or that I am out of my mind to invest so much time and money in a friendship with a person I never met face to face. The fact is that, after more than 8 years, you DO know a person. Nobody stays friends that long if it is not for real, nobody sits in front of a computer for years with no other payoff unless they mean what they say.

No doubt that many internet friendships do not endure. No doubt people get fooled more often than not. I have been very lucky. The most interesting part of my internet experience with other people is that, because over the 8 years I rose to a very high position in that fan club where I met Luisa, there are maybe a thousand people in many countries who "know who Tonchi is". Or they think they do. Many people think they hate me and a slightly smaller number think I am wonderful, all based on what I have done for them or refused to do, but NONE of them know who I am. And they never will. Of the possibly one thousand people, only 3 of them know what I look like. And of course, Thalia has met me and she knows who I am and what I look like and she doesn't care, because she is a wonderful person and that's why I work for her for free.

But the point I am making is, you have to really REALLY think about whether the person you are supposedly getting so close to online WANTS you to know them or not. If you do not, you are very vulnerable. Choose carefully. Don't believe what you want to believe. The internet has been wonderful for me, especially during the years I have not been able to work outside my home, but it is also a place where deception and subterfuge are common and people lie a lot or weave their own fantasies based on what somebody types on the screen. I have found the best people I know through the internet. I wish everybody could say the same.