No, I did NOT meet her online

Number one with a bullet! The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century has managed to top Blogdex, Popdex and Daypop (a pretty strong showing on Technorati, too). A lot of blogs have been pointed to The Girl Who Cried “Webmaster”, and some of their authors are under the mistaken impression that it’s a cautionary tale about the danger of online “dating”.

I’ve made it clear that I met New Girl in the real world — not online — in the comments for that blog entry and would’ve left it at that except for the fact that someone pointed me to a comment made in the comments section of another blog, and it got my dander up:

Bah! This guy is just crying [more like whining] now cuz he won’t get to have *sex* with a “hot” chick he met online. Boo hoo! Cry me a river n’ give the guy a telethon. I say more femme dupers – less shallow online horndogs!!

Online? Guilty as charged. I have a blog. But really, I’m very much a citzen of the real world. The Fresh Prince of Meatspace, if you will.

Horndog? Sometimes. I am after all, male.

But shallow? “More femme dupers”? I suspect the commenter’s got some unresolved issues and lingering bitterness.

Normally I wouldn’t give a crap, but let’s just say that my Zen isn’t at its usual level these days.

Allow me to state for the record:

I met New Girl in real life.

Sorry to ruin your schadenfreude, honey.

We met at the neighbourhood cafe, Tequila Bookworm. I was introduced to her by friends, one of whom I’ve known for over a decade. Two of these friends are Web programmers, and both were convinced that new Girl was a webmaster and developer at Alliance Atlantis. One of these friends had a friend who went out with her for a short while, and this friend-of-a-friend had no idea of what she really was like. She used enough tech and gamer talk to have us convinced.

If only it were traditional to invite girls to do some pair programming rather than dancing. I might’ve seen through her act.

As AKMA astutely observed, it was a reversal of what you’d expect: the danger came from real life and salvation came from the online world.

This is precisely why I don’t try to “pick up” (or for my British friends, “pull”) online: there’s just too much miscommunication possible. You don’t have those subtle nuances like facial expressions, body language and what they call “chemistry” and all the other goodies that come from real life. The anonymity of medium makes it that much easier to pretend to be something you’re not. And yes, we’ve had con artists and scammers around long before we had the Internet.

Once again, thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent me email. Barring anything else that gets my dander up and makes me write another blog entry, I’ll see you folks on Monday.