Strangers on the Internets

Originally posted at WNE on 08/01/07

At 10pm tonight I will be at the Richmond airport picking up a friend I have never meet.

I have been playing video games online with the same group of guys for going on three years now. We know all about each others personal lives, poke fun at each other and generally have a good time. All of the guys who live in Richmond, about eight including myself, get together for lunch on a regular basis. When a tournament was announced for the game we play competitively, we saw it as an opportunity to meet the rest of the team outside of in game voice chat. Plane tickets were purchased, carpools were planned and preparations were made. Then it got canceled.

War_Hammer or Doug, if your in to using real names and not game handles, still had a ticket purchased from Texas to Richmond. So we made a mad dash to plan a LAN party and cookout in his honor. He will be staying with Crystal and I tonight and tomorrow night and then with other members of our team till Sunday.

When relaying this story to some of the ladies at work I got concerned looks and questions.

"Do you have a gun for protection?"

"Your letting a guy you meet on the internet stay at your house?"

I guess the situation sounds bad when you try and explain it to people who see the internet as a place to send chain letter emails and watch dogs ride skateboards. We have built our own community, often share family photos and spend most evenings chatting with each other and playing games for hours on end. I know these guys, without having to be in there physical presence. We are friends.

After sharing my coworkers misplaced concerns with my internet friends (see that sounds bad) we all had a good laugh and made some morbid jokes at our own expense. Hammer let us know that his wife had also expressed some concern, you know, in case I'm the crazy one. I guess all this concern could be attributed to the news media and their rhetoric of fear, a la a Michael Moore stump speech. The internet is the tool of pornoholics, pedophiles and kidnappers as far as Nightline and other "hard" news programs are concerned. I guess I never thought of myself of living and interacting on "that" internet. I grew up using this here interslice and fancy myself one of its savvier users. Its a place to build friendships and have fun as far as I'm concernicus.

I look at Hammer's visit as an opportunity to hang with a good friend, not meeting a stranger for the first time. Tomorrow we will be tooling around Richmond hitting the civil war sites, grabbing lunch with the working stiffs and going bowling with the rest of the gang in the evening. Friday we are going down to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg and coming back to my house for a Guitar Hero, burgers and beer cookout. Saturday we will be host to Hammer LAN 07 and Sunday we may get out to Colonial Downs.