Does your Avatar want to Date my Avatar?
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“Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.”
Courtship has come a long way from the king of the jungle’s not-very-eloquent introduction; however, the desired results have remained the same.
People meet their soul mates in various places – the school playground, youth centres, seedy bars, in the supermarket aisle, on a trans-Atlantic flight; anytime people engage with each other there is always the chance that sparks will fly. The emergence of online chat rooms and programmes like MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ and so on has opened the doors for many people to ‘meet’ and get to know others whom they might not have met under other circumstances.
David and Daphne Kelleher are one such couple who met online and who are soon to be celebrating 10 years together. Over a cup of tea, Daphne tells me their story complete with inputs of ‘no, that’s not how it happened!’ from David.
How did you get to know each other?
We met when chatting on mIRC. He was chatting using someone’s else’s nickname and he came in the room saying ‘Xi dwejjaq tahdem is-Sibt filghaxija’ so I asked him what he did and when he said that he was a journalist I asked whether I knew him. He mentioned his name on an open channel, giving me a very bad impression of who David Kelleher was, because even though I didn’t know him I had read his interviews and I thought that he was a ‘downright bore’ and a ‘nerdish journalist’! (David: Feel free to write that down!) We started chatting after that and I found out that he was much more interesting than I had first thought! We met in person for the first time at a channel meeting a couple of weeks after we had started chatting; one that I wasn’t planning on going to because I had a friend’s wedding and one which he said that he wasn’t thinking of attending either. However my friend and I decided to go to the meeting after the wedding and he happened to be there. In fact I didn’t go to the channel meeting with the intention of meeting him; I went there with my friend to meet the whole group.
Did you know what the other person looked like before you actually met?
Although he had sent me a very blurred photo of himself and I sent him one too, I imagined him to be very different to what he actually looks like! I knew that he had a beard and glasses however I imagined someone short and stocky living on an endless supply of coffee, cigarettes and crisps! Needless to say the reality was far more appealing.
What happened after you met each other for the first time?
After meeting we just continued chatting online and he kept saying that ‘one day we’ll go for a coffee”, “one day we’ll go here”, “one day we’ll go there” but I didn’t really think too much about it. So then he embarrassed me by going on the main channel and typing ‘Piao (my nickname) will you go on a date with me?’ There were about 200 people on the channel and slowly the channel froze as everyone waited for my reply. I replied to him in a private message which he then copied and pasted in the main channel so that they could have their answer – she said yes.
What made you decide to agree to go on a date?
When chatting he was very understanding, not the usual ‘me, me, me’ type of conversation and we also had quite a lot of common ground. So he called me to arrange a date and I realized that I was really busy that week, however I was free on Thursday. Two seconds after we hung up it dawned on me that I actually had a drama workshop on Thursday! But he wasn’t going to let me get out of it because he decided that he would call for me afterwards – which he did. From the outset he started playing jokes on me and when we were walking towards the car he stopped near a broken-down, rusty, old car pretending that it was it. He wanted to surprise me by taking me to the casino but since he had asked me to bring along my ID card I suspected his plan! A second date followed… and in June 2002 we got married. On the day of our wedding there was another channel meeting organized and we decided to go there after the wedding at about 2:00 a.m. all dressed up in our wedding outfits!
Do you think that online chat rooms have made it easier to meet a partner?
Meeting someone online can kick start the relationship because you get to know a person’s character in detail. It also removes certain inhibitions that would be present were you to meet someone in a bar because it can be quite nerve-wrecking to go up to a stranger and introduce yourself – this barrier is removed through online chatting. You don’t worry about how you look when you’re chatting online, you can have rollers in your hair! You can chat without being ultra-conscious of yourself. mIRC made it quite easy to meet people because it was a very open community where everyone joined one common virtual room and then moved into smaller rooms; nowadays I think that the number of opportunities are more limited, although it’s probably quicker to get to know the person because you can see the person immediately via webcam.
Do you still chat to each other online?
When I’m downstairs and he’s upstairs I’ll speak to him over MSN rather than shout down the stairs because our house has very bad acoustics!
Published in TECHNOLOGY SUNDAY, The Sunday Times – November 22, 2009
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