Love You Long Time

Gone are the days where you meet someone, exchange phone numbers and sit by the telephone, or keep your mobile right next to your pillow, waiting for him to call. Now, you exchange email addresses, add him on MSN Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, AIM, gTalk, Yahoo! Messenger and the other 2, 384, 763 social networks available out there.

Here's the thing. Because we're hiding behind a computerized security blanket, we feel it is safe to practice the rather new unhealthy obsession. Cyber attention whoring. Well, everyone knows cyber stalking. Not many address cyber attention whoring. Probably why it craves attention.

Firstly, you have what I call psycho-babble. This is when you change your MSN status 20 times in the span of 10 minutes. Why? So that person your whoring to realizes that you MUST be online in order to make such changes. Not only that, it's called psycho for a reason, I mean, apart from having 20 different thoughts in 10 minutes, those thoughts are usually attention whoring thoughts. Say, angry, raging comments such as "You SOB! I hope your uncle Satan claims you and your family!" Or, over dramatized comments like "OMG! I almost DIED in the shower just now!" And then there's that emo comment that sounds something like "Love... is something that will only crush you, if not kill you..." and lastly, I call it 'The Vague', as it goes a little something like "Sigh..." or "Why....?". All this is done with hope that your attention seekee will IM you to ask you what's up with your status. 

Next, we have the faux bad connection syndrome (FBCS). Truth is, your connection is fine. You paid your monthly fees, it's just that he's not paying attention to you. So, you quit and reconnect your MSN Messenger every 5 minutes. Why? Because when you reconnect, your name pop ups. This is so he knows you are actually online. Just in case he missed your name when he scrolled down his list or forgot to check who's online when he logged on. Oh, and it would be easier for him to just click on your pop up to start a chat with you! Now aren't we considerate.

Moving on, we have the but oh no I can't. Ever get tired of seeing the same screen name you've been using for the past 5 months? You decide to spice it up a little. But oh no I can't! What if he doesn't recognize my nickname and just skips me? So, if Prince Charming added you as ButtCheeks863, you're stuck with that until you decide he's not worth it anymore.

If all that's mentioned above does not work, it's time to get visual. Also known as, the model. This is when your put up the most artistic pictures, the most photoshopped pictures and the prettiest picture you could find from your photo album I Love Me. You hope that by realizing how hot you suddenly look in 100x100 and blurred out dim shots, he might actually want to pay you some attention. Some might even take a step further and perform the cyber seduction, which is to post risqué pictures of themselves. Depending on your face, that is indeed a risk.

When all fails, you decide that to make things easier, you should delete him. That way, you don't have to know when he's online and you won't have to worry about him not messaging you. This is called the fail. Because what happens next, you'd be thinking, "I wonder if he's online now..." and re-adds him. This only means one thing. You have thus, memorized his email address. So, your whole operation has done nothing but make you into a term well known to us today, a cyber stalker. Mission is the fail.

To be honest, this seems like too much work. I'd take brain tumor from cellphone waves beside my pillow every night any day.