In Which an Anti-Internet-Culture Snob Discloses Her Biggest Publicly-Presentable Secret: I Am 'gal'

Most people who know me well know my unwavering annoyance with internet chat culture, MySpace, email lingo, avatars, and the like. I know it's irrational, but I am so peeved by the weight and obligatory nature of it all. I have never once, not even in jest (that I recall), until now, written: LOL, ROTFLMAO, BRB, sez, cuz-nor have I substituted numbers for letters, partaken in (((((((hugs))))))), forwarded a FWD, or anything of the sort.

It is somewhat of an ironic confession then, to admit I had a fixed and visible place in an infamous chat room. In December 1996, amazingly over a decade ago now, the online environment for me, like for many others, was a dazzling new playground. I remember the absolute epiphany of instant information-it was like being in a library on Mars. There were unlimited vegetarian recipes, information on making candles, incense, Polaroid transfers, online art galleries, academic sites and boards about dream symbols, Jung, Kafka, ghosts, UFOs-I could not get enough. I had a lot of free time too. I was in a very flat and faltering marriage, home all day with my son, an easy, happy toddler who took all manner of long naps. In short, I was bored, very bored.

Recently, I was searching for the Omni Magazine archives, and came across the amazing site, The Wayback Machine. Like a dare, there is an empty URL box, and an enter button, on which is written 'take me back.' I still have a bookmark for that long-defunct chat room, so I entered the URL, and whoa! In that one and only archived page of Farsight Open Chat, from July 6, 1997, at about 11:30 pm, there are exactly 10 posts, two of which are mine; I am 'gal.'

It all began with finding famed writer and notorious abductee Whitley Strieber's website; there I ventured into my first chat room. I chose as truthful and benign, 'handle' as I could think of, and that was 'gal.' The people behind the new-agey, love-and-light, genre-clichéd handles (angelwolf, ufobabe, greycloud, searcher, NeonKnight, spaceman, etc.) were eccentric yet authentic, and kind.