How To Have an Internet Girlfriend

Cyber_picRecently I’ve noticed a surge of interest in the question of how to acquire and maintain a so-called “internet girlfriend.” Since I’ve gained some expertise in this matter — mostly by accident — I decided to write down a few lessons I’ve learned as a kind of public service. No need for thanks; I’m just paying it forward.

1) The key

By far the most important thing to understand about having an internet girlfriend is the utterly boundaryless nature of the relationship. At first you may not even realize how different it is from a regular meatspace relationship. But if you stick with it, you’ll notice some important differences very quickly.

2) Where to meet

For instance, consider the incredible variety of potential meeting “places” which exist online. You could (virtually) bump into a candidate on any site, at any time; the internet is a market that never closes. So if you’re serious about pursuing an internet girlfriend, then you should never post anything online which you couldn’t plausibly explain later.

This probably eliminates about fifty percent of your online activities right away. Yes, that’s correct: Attracting the attention of a potential internet girlfriend is much harder than it seems. And this is just the beginning; the following rules are even stricter.

3) Setting yourself apart

When it comes to getting a woman’s attention online, there’s simply no telling what will work. Women on the internet are a rare and valued commodity, like diamonds or trained macaws; they can expect to have their most eccentric whims indulged at every turn. So you need to keep trying various attention-getting strategies until you find one that works.

So don’t keep trying the same approach if it’s clearly not working; that way madness lies. And for God’s sake don’t fall back on just trying to “Be yourself.” You should have learned this lesson offline already, but on the internet you’ve got to aim much higher. There are a million “selves” you could be; there’s no reason to stick with a proven loser.

4) Setting expectations.

Once you do manage to attract a woman’s attention, you can’t expect the relationship to follow any kind of schedule. She’ll get back to you when she gets back to you — that’s the whole of the law. There’s no such thing as her being tardy with a response. Again, holders of scarce resources call the shots here; would you expect anything different from a trained macaw?

And this rule goes double for emotional tone. Regardless of whatever tone was reached in your last interaction, you cannot possibly predict what frame of mind she might be in when she next sits down to talk or text or Skype with you. So you must strive to maintain absolutely identical emotional expectations every time you hear from her. Keeping an even keel is critical — even more critical than it is offline. And if you’re undergoing a bit of emotional turbulence yourself, then my advice is to stay entirely off the internet until you get it sorted out.

5) Exchanges. 

As for what to put in her inbox to catch her attention — well, people have success with all sorts of things: stories, jokes, playlists, YouTube clips. Plus photos — you’re going to want to consider photos as well. Maybe you drive a hot car, or have visited an exotic locale. And if you’ve got an impressive tool of reproduction, you might try that as well; with the right equipment and the right girl, that could be a winning strategy too. You know you’ll be competing against a raft of other junk pics, at least — and it’s crucial that you stand out in some way. Find one.

As for what to request from her: Don’t be shy here, friend. At first of course it’s wise to request something personal and unique — a small token to confirm that your internet paramour isn’t actually a fifty-year-old unemployed civil servant named Murray, or a fiction created by your college friends to punk you.

But at your first opportunity you’ll want to push those boundaries a little further. Women do appreciate attention — and for them, the internet is basically a device for collecting all the attention they can possibly attract in twenty-four hours each day. So don’t fail to offer that up, every chance you get.

6) Rendezvous

Now, regarding meatspace meet-ups: I realize that you’ll be tempted. But I advise extreme caution, because in fact meet-ups undermine everything that’s great about having an internet girlfriend. The distance-enforced intimacy. The lack of obligation. And whatever strategy you finally settled on to grab her attention — do you seriously want to replicate that effort in real life? Just think about what you’re doing, is all I’m saying here.

7) The next step

And the final thing you’ll need to anticipate from your new internet girlfriend is: At some point, she’ll be gone. Abruptly, irreversibly, irretrievably gone.

For a guy, the internet is a device for multiplying his experiences of loss and rejection by a thousandfold. Regardless of how swimmingly things go with your internet girlfriend for a short time — regardless of how many revealing pics, sexy videos, heartfelt stories and mutual wanks are shared — someone else will inevitably catch her attention. Probably online, but maybe in real life.

And there you’ll suddenly be — your johnson limp in your hand, stunned by your instantaneous and utter replaceability, totally unprepared to go back to streaming porn. And in this way you might finally catch a glimpse of the bottomless chasm you’ve been teetering above all along — this coruscating kaleidoscope of women (and apparent women) beckoning you into an endless cyber-abyss of remote but not unreachable possibilities, its distant walls layered with racy pics and emoticon winks and other innocuous items…but never filled up, no, you could spend ninety hours a day sending out notes and selfies and junk shots and yet never hope to establish a truly permanent presence in anyone’s life. Instead everything is just whisked away from you the moment you click “Send,” until you yourself topple into the abyss and abruptly face the same horror that twentieth-century astronomers felt upon discovering just how huge and empty the universe is and how utterly marooned and alone humanity is in it.

Or even better, you’ll discover that you were actually tumbling headlong through space this whole time. You thought it was the entire world that was swirling around with dizzying speed — but in fact it was only you.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what it’s like when you’re just a regular Joe Blow trying to chat up girls on the internet. Personally, I think you’re better off using the internet to do something much more bounded and finite — like play chess.

Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *