Why You Can't Drink Saltwater

By Megapig
MegaPIG@aol.com

 
“Water! Water everywhere, but neery a drop to drink!” Ocean water contains mostly, well …. water. Next it contains salt. Most of the fluid in your body is saline (salt water) …. so why can’t you drink salt water ?
 
The answer is because, in layman’s terms, salt absorbs water, so when you’re thirsty because you are dehydrated and you drink salt water.. you become even more dehydrated and thirsty.
 
Undoubtedly, the first question you are asking now is what does this have to do with anything?
 
Well, I was just talking to a friend that has decided to give up on being On-Line and as much as she feels like she wants to, she doesn’t know why. I didn’t know either, but I put my considerable intellect to work on it … and came to some interesting conclusions.
 
Most everyone originally got on-line for the same reason: It opens a world of information, resources and contacts. (Well, ok, ya got me: to meet girls!) For people who are of D/s and BDSM minds, it opened us up to a huge base of people with whom we would otherwise never have had this much contact. There was always a risk of getting too excited at this world. The PIG determined quite some time ago to be wary of people who “discovered” D/s on-line. People who said things like “I always felt this way, but I could never put a name to it.” Why should one be wary of this ? Well, maybe you shouldn’t. What I decided, for me, was that information on D/s BDSM and any number of alternate life styles has always been available. It’s called the Public Library. B. Dalton. Bookstar, etc. What I decided was that most of the people I met that “had always had this feeling” were too uninformed, lazy and/or perhaps stupid to take advantage of this wealth of information until on-line services conveniently dropped it in their laps. Should this be a big issue ? Perhaps not. In MY experience, I found that people that fit in to this category (not YOU, not ME… but yanno… THEM) turned out to STILL be too uninformed, lazy and/or stupid to DO anything with the information or lifestyle until and unless it’s delivered to them at home, where they can access it and presume to be a part of the lifestyle without having to put forth ANY effort to attain it other than sit at home behind the keyboard and click, smiley and LOL their lives away. But I digress.
 
Being On-Line means suddenly having easy access to an entire world of like minded people and this ought to be a good thing. Except that there can be a multitude of problems that don’t at first appear to be problems, that everyone in general should try to avoid, or at least acknowledge:
 
· The more time we spend on-line, the more we tend to think that being on-line is important.
· The more we talk to people on-line, the more we tend to think that they are real.
· The more time we spend in our favorite chat room, the more we tend to think that we’re part of a ‘community’ of like-minded people.
 
 
There breathes no one among us that hasn’t at some idle minute, thought we heard our computer calling to us. “C’mon. I’m right here! All your friends are here. You have a few minutes, let’s log on and see what’s up!” [editor’s note: If you ACTUALLY heard your computer say this, or if your computer says other things to you, perhaps telling you to kill your landlord or to buy yourself a new hat. you need serous help!] Gone, for the most part are the days we pick up a book just to spend some idle time. Go to the library and participate in a children’s reading program – or go on-line? Clean up the garage – or go on-line? In the old days of AOL, when people paid by the hour, there was an hourglass that would come up every some often to remind us how long we had been on-line. I personally think I saw one of them that said “When was the last time you’ve even seen the sky?”
 
As we meet more like-minded people on-line, and the more we talk to them, the more we tend to think they are real. Well, of course they ARE real, but we tend to think that they are what, who and where they say they are, and with that, we tend to think that WE TOO, are exactly what, who and where we say we are – just because we say so in our on-line profile.
 
As we spend our time happily chatting along, we get comfort from a sense of acceptance in that we have found ‘our people’ and that we have formed a community of like-minded people. (except that in some cases it’s not a community at all, more like an insane asylum in leather).
 
So … back to my friend and drinking salt water ….
 
The vague feeling my friend is expressing is that the more time she spends on-line with her friends, the less connected and more lonely she feels. Why should this be? Well once again PIG has the answer:
 
What is really on-line is a collection of cyber personalities. I don’t say ‘cyber personalities’ like its necessarily a bad thing. But ask yourself this: Would you be willing to get dressed up, leave the house and spend as much time talking to the same people in person? Every day? And if not, why not? Partially, it would require more time and effort. It would be less convenient and, oddly, if you think about it honestly, the people we meet wouldn’t hold THAT much interest for us because we’d be staring at each other all day everyday instead of being out learning new and interesting things to bring TO the conversation. We would stagnate [editor’s note: AS IF we’re not doing that already ??]
 
Our cyber personalities aren’t necessarily a community. If brought together in a D/s chat room we can only say that we have a SINGLE common interest … and given the diversity of needs among any group, you may even have to really STRETCH the term ‘common interest’ to make it work. In my friend’s case, she feels the need to be in a submissive relationship and that’s great. Problem is, she doesn’t like to wear black, she doesn’t like to be spanked, she has no interest in play parties or being tied up or stripped half naked in public. So in the nebulous world of chat rooms, 80 to 90% of what she sees and hears is of no interest to her. I know BDSM people who feel the same way: “I don’t want to kneel before you, just spank me before we have sex!” Perhaps 50% of what THEY hear is of no interest to them.
 
Imagine, if you will, being in a physical room with 500 people with whom you slowly discover you have next to nothing in common. The NAME is right … They use the same words as you do, but in time you find out that their minds, while nice and friendly, do not have common thoughts, goals and desires as yours. Most people would soon begin to feel left out. Maybe even isolated.
 
And the more time you spend WITH them …. the more lonely you might feel.
 
 Then imagine that having realized this …. there IS NO room for you to enter that DOES have people with like minds. How would you feel then? With 800,000 people being on-line at the same time, finding 12, 10 or even 2 who share your needs the way you feel them is a daunting task.
 
· Is D/s is unusual because of how we have hijacked, appropriated and abused the definitions to suit our lives? Is Special Interests: Sewing Circle any different because they really DO have common terminology and an interest less nebulous?
 
· Is this really a problem? Has anyone but my friend experienced this?
 
I think that is partly true. As I witness chat in rooms, I find that I DO tend to just glass over when there is a protracted conversation about being flogged, spanked, etc. Sometimes when the 5th little twit has ooo’d and ahhh’d about it, I want to yell out “Get a life. Get a grip. You’re an endorphin junkie! Go RUN 5 miles – you’ll get the same endorphin rush … you can do it alone, don’t need a date … and be healthier for the experience!”
 
Then I remember that they probably feel the same way when I extol the virtues of planting my will into another person’s head in such a way that my subject thinks it’s their own desire.
 
In truth …. we simply don’t belong in the same room with each other.
 
The answer is: there is no answer. Because there is no problem. All we do is know what we’re doing. That not everyone that we LOL is our best friend. That On-Line is not real life. That not everyone we meet who uses the same words we do (such as pernucleate) has the same thoughts behind them that we have. That what we see, say and read is just a small portion of who and what we really are. And hopefully not the BEST part of who we are.
 
And of course … first and foremost …… remember that
 
The Hokey-Pokey really IS what it’s all about.

~~~

Copyright 2003

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