우정 밖에 바라는게 없어요. 그냥 편하고 친하게 지내려고요.

There was a T-shirt I saw not long ago that said, "I'm shy, not anti-social. You can talk to me." I thought I should probably get that shirt.

 
 

I like chatting on the Internet sometimes. I've been chatting with people all over the world for probably the better part of ten years, off and on. Ever since I started using the Internet. I've met some really cool people through chat, although I have never really met any of them in real life. I think part of me has always been a little paranoid about talking to maybe the wrong person who will end up being a real weirdo or worse.

 
 

It's hard though. A lot of times, I go into chat rooms because I'm bored, and it's really difficult to find people that are actually interested in having a half-way intelligent conversation. I've never really been one for voice or video chat, so a lot of people shy away from me when I tell them I don't have that capability. I'm even a little scared about revealing my picture or receiving pictures of people. A lot of the conversations I've had with people in just regular chat rooms have been difficult. It sometimes seems like the only people online are foreign men who either can't speak English or they can't type and all they want is cybersex or they just tell you how much they love you and how pretty you are even though you haven't even shown them your picture yet. It's really fake feeling, and going into chat rooms when I'm bored is probably not a good idea anyway because this kind of interaction just makes me even more bored.

 
 

I think that the key though is to find a niche market that you are interested in, and you'll have a better chance of meeting some like-minded people. These days, I've been spending some time on Livemocha.com, a social language learning community where you can make friends that speak the language you're learning and you can chat with them and do language exercises and get feedback from the community on them. Sure, I've talked to a few weirdos on there, but I think the majority of my "friends" on Livemocha are pretty cool people who, like me, are trying to expose themselves to languages.

 
 

At this point in my Internet life, with social networking and knowledge sharing so important to the very existence of the Internet, I think I might be willing to meet some of my new found "friends" in real life. I've always been kind of a shy and quiet person when I first meet somebody, but maybe after chatting with these people for a while, I will have opened up to a few enough so that when we'd meet it wouldn't really be like meeting somebody for the very first time and not knowing anything about them. The way I see it, I probably have a lot more to gain from the experience than to lose…and hey…I might get some yummy meals or good sightseeing guides out of the deal. So…wanna be friends? :)