How do you strike up a conversation online?

originally posted by: ksiezyc
a reply to: Profusion

What do you mean by paranoia?

It's just having an incredible level of suspicion about everything that relates to or comes from a CT-forum. Someone from this forum cut me off from chatting with them because they claimed I could be using my conversations with them as the basis for thread ideas or I could have "other ulterior motives." Just thinking about that boggles my mind. That was pure paranoia.

Another person I met here wouldn't chat via email or instant messaging unless it was all encrypted, and they wouldn't use Skype (or a program like it, even a secure one) at all. Another person has given me so many different contradictory stories about their life that I still have no idea which one is true. Not that it matters, but the extent that person has gone to obfuscate who they are is incredible to me.

I could give other examples like those, but it makes me feel weird to discuss it. Paranoia makes me feel weird. I'm sick of feeling it.

a reply to: Profusion

This conversation is still on-going. But, I almost lost this person by mentioning the wrong thing at the wrong time. I can pinpoint about three sentences where it all went wrong. Before those three sentences, her intention was clearly for us to become friends. After the three sentences, she immediately said she didn't know much longer she wanted to chat with me. She's still going in that direction now. She changed the focus of the conversation from being like friends to being almost completely philosophical in nature after those three sentences.

Those three sentences were just a killer. It wasn't anything inappropriate. It was just the worst possible thing for me to write. It wasn't bad, just a huge mistake.

That led me to a major epiphany. I consider myself to be an empath, but I realized that I'm only an empath in real-time or after the fact. I have almost no conception of what my actions will make others feel before the fact a lot of times. I think that's why I'm so much better on the phone or with face to face communications (my true strength).

I asked this woman if we can move things in the direction of being friends rather than just a philosophical discussion. She's telling me that she doesn't think a philosophical discussion will go beyond a few weeks (not with me specifically but with anyone). She's trying to let me down gracefully (and she's doing a great job). It's completely my fault that we ended up going in that direction.

I hope I can save this situation. She's a perfect person to chat with.

a reply to: Profusion

I added up all the emails that I've sent and received with different women on this forum. The total is over 160 emails in three months. I would estimate there were around 200 text messages with them on this forum too. We're not talking about a lot of people either, just four. I had a brief romantic fling with someone on this forum during that time. There were countless hours of chatting between us.

Why am I bringing all of that up? The common theme through all of those communications was paranoia.

When I compare the experiences I just described with my experience with the woman I'm chatting with the non-CT forum, I sense no paranoia. The incredible thing is that her view of life is exactly like the people on that particular forum. She states 'scientific facts' and 'scientific theories' verbatim as if she's memorized them from a textbook and then almost always claims, "That's the answer as far as we know." Almost all the posters on that forum are like that.

Meanwhile, the women I got to know from this forum all seemed to be on the woo side of the spectrum (as one would expect).

I'm starting to get a clear picture of what's going on...

Willie Sutton gave his reason for robbing banks as: "That's where the money is."

In other words, you don't go to the most paranoid, cold place to find warmth.