Posted by Bob on April 5, 2006 at 6:45 pm

“Stop HIDING behind the compter screen! Get out into the REAL WORLD!”

Since I am about the last person who can be accused of hiding anywhere, I am the perfect on to flush this nonsense down where it belongs.

I hate the telephone, relative to the internet, for a one reason: The person I am talking to is on a schedule. He calls me when I am thinking about something else, and he is on the way to something else, too.

A good deal of the time is spent trying to get get in what he needs to say to me when he can contact me personally.

On the internet, you are here when you feel like being here. I do not have to remember your telephone number or get ready to talk to you and intrduce you to the topic I am interested in at the moment, when your mind is somewhere else — otherwise you would be calling ME.

Phone call Stage One: Getting the number right and introducing the topic. Stage Two: Getting your input and my reaction to your input, all in the time allotted and at a time neither of us chose.

Personal visits are far, far worse t han the telephone. You have to GET there, which means that you have just been through a set of directions and little incidents.

Then comes all the “getting each comfortable.”

On the internet, you are here when you want to be here and I am here when I want to be here.

Onthe internet, the topic is already introduced when you sit and when I sit down.

I am mystified as to why this constitutes HIDING:

“I actually met so-and-so.”

My concern is not whether you physically sat down and saw the actual face of someone, but what did you SAY?

You can hide anything that was actually said in a talk about where he lives and how he looks.

Sight and smell are the province of a dog.

A dog can get nothing out of the Internet.

On the internet, if you tell someone you were talking to somebody on it, all you can discuss is WHAT YOU SAID.

I think the person who you of “hiding behind the computer screen” is the one who wants to hide. He wants to talk about where he was and how he was THERE, not about hwat was said, which is province of the human mind.

If anyone ever really reads and thinks about what I say, he will realize this is a repetition. The person who talks endlessly about “liars” is a liar. The person who talks endlessly about Hate is a hater. The person who talks endlessly about “hiding” is hiding.

That is the kind of thinking an interrogator does. It is the kind of thinking an interrogator gets so good at that he is paid for it.

Being there physically is a substitute for being there mentally.