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i'm popular on the internet!

Thursday night my friend R. was driving me home from dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Burbank. I had had two rather strong margaritas and was balancing on that fine edge of tipsy when my cell phone rang. I looked at the display. It was LG, my friend from San Francisco who I met on Consumating.

We’re here, he said, and lots of people want to talk to you.

Now LG is one of my friends. We’ve actually met, hung out, spent some time together. The seven other people he passed the phone to I had never talked to. In fact, some of them I had barely corresponded with.

R. looked at me, confused.

It’s my San Francisco friends. They’re all out together. I whispered to her.

So you know all of these people? she whispered back.

I’ve only met LG. The others I’ve never met at all.

She dropped me off at my house and the phone continued to ring with various Northern Californians with the play-by-play of the big Consumeet. In-between I was fielding text messages from a friend of mine in New York, and IMs from another friend in San Diego. Again, all people I had never seen in real life. People I had never hugged hello. People I had never had a beer with. .

I sat there until 2:00am, sipping on a glass of sangria and chatting. I passed messages along. I doled out advice. I thought to myself

I’m popular – on the Internet.

My nerd tendencies went dormant after I graduated from college. I moved out to Los Angeles and tried valiantly to fit in. I worked at an agency and wore suits and went to Beverly Hills salons to get my haircut. I went out with groups of Agents-in-Training, late nights drinking martinis at Kate Mantilini and bitching about our bosses. I felt like I didn’t fit in. Because I didn’t fit in. But I tried. Desperately.

My nerd tendencies reemerged when I started as a temp at EarthLink network in 1996. Suddenly my love for the Atari 2600 and comic book stores was a blessing, not a curse. Soon after the slackmistress and the slack were born. And my Internet personality began.

As I’ve written before, who I was and who the slackmistress was were two different people. In meatspace I was shy and unconfident. On the Internet I was sassy and outspoken. The slackmistress was me but the me I secretly wanted to be. This split personality was the main reason I never posted a photo of myself. I was convinced that you’d see that I was a fraud. I’d be a let down. A disappointment. I pled my fear of being stalked as the reason to not show my face. Nobody argued.

Nearly five months ago, I had a small meltdown. I was still dealing with the collapse of my three-and-a-half year relationship. I was despondent over my job situation. I sat at the computer, weeping and trying to write. Something. Anything. My fingers hit the keyboard. I have nothing left, I typed. I looked at the words on the screen when it hit me. I had one last thing.

I knew that things had to change. I had already been working on integrating who the slackmistress was and who I was, to the point where we were the same person. But now I had to put a public face on it. I posted a photo. One, two, three and then suddenly it wasn’t a big deal. What had I been so worried about?

I also decided that I had to go out. I had integrated my virtual personality and my real personality. Now I had to figure out how to do the same with my Virtual Life and my Real Life. I had to meet people. I had to date. I had to make contacts. I had to make friends.

The question was where did I find these people?

I was looking for the group who didn’t peak back in high school. I wanted The Rest of Us. Smart kids. Band geeks. Computer nerds. Theater dorks. Science fair winners.

Enter Consumating.

I know that the site was initially created as a dating service, but a few months back the focus switched to more of a social network. Think MySpace, but for nerds. I consider it a place where the Exceptions now Rule. I don’t know if it was founder Ben Brown’s intent, but Consumators have managed to blur the lines between Internet space and meatspace. Meetings are commonplace. Outings are encouraged. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been on the site for six months or six days, the group will welcome you with open arms. Everyone can be a part of the ConsuMatrix.

I know it sounds like I've partaken of the Electric Kool-Aid. But in the past three months, I’ve met people in Los Angeles. In San Francisco. Friends are coming out from New York. They’re smart and sexy and they go out and Do Things. They’re friendly and non-judgmental and sometimes meetups erupt into spontaneous makeout sessions. It’s like a high school party except that the nerds are now the popular kids and we’re all drinking legally.

I’m in the midst of planning another Los Angeles get-together. The San Francisco contingent has requested my presence at Promsumating. Virtual life and real life? They’re now one and the same.

Check it out.





I’m popular on the Internet.