Taking my time to think, I realized that I had lived my life very childishly for someone of my age. A lot of what I thought was funny, the irresponsible spending, and my inability to live on my own, stemmed from a life sheltered from reality and consumed by heavy internet usage.
The internet, of course, had its ups and downs. There was a time when I aspired to become a radio personality on the internet which helped me build the community, Elite Peeps, with the help of my friends Xitij, Rosemary, and Harrison. We had fun together and we were pretty tight. I was also respected because I was stern and never let anyone cross us.
Although I hadn't taken the time to work on my schooling and save money from work, my heart was clear and I was kind. I could say that I was a decent person who generally didn't hurt anyone.
And then I found tinychat.
After a short time of its conception I discovered 4chan, a website based on the Japanese 2chan, dedicated to twisted humor and strange pornography. The most famous board, /b or "random", was the most terrible board of them all, luckily I didn't frequent that section due to their vehement racism against black people. However, I was exposed enough to the website that I started to develop a dark and twisted sense of humor.
Enough back story, I eventually started going on tinychat because everyone constantly posted links to channels from that site, mostly to encourage women to show off their breasts without the strict rules on stickam, which at the time was a haven for pedophiles.
Eventually I saw a link to a tinychat channel on 4chan to a room called /canada. It was advertised as a place to go for a reason I don't remember, and my curiosity got the best of me so I checked. There, I saw a video chatroom full of random people. It was a bit strange, actually witnessing a group of people crack the same sorts of jokes seen on 4chan, but what got to me the most was the fact that everyone in that community was white, not a single black person in sight. As a result, added with the culture of the random board on 4chan, there were a lot of speculation and out right racism against black people. Many would make jokes about how incapable blacks were at articulating their thoughts with words, and their primal desire to eat fried chicken and wash it all down with a tall cup of purple drink.
And on a summer day, cool off by consuming a large watermelon and spit out the seeds like a machine gun.
While most would have left in disgust, I was intrigued. I had always had a knack for putting people in their place, and I saw all their thoughts as a challenge that could easily be dispelled with a mere few sentences. I was also very curious about the racist mind, and thought this was an opportunity to observe them in action (as if I were an anthropologist).
Back to backstory, I had soon began the habit of messing with the racists in the random board of 4chan, challenging their ideas on racism and watching them squirm as they tried to justify their thoughts with pseudo-intellectual arguments involving the bell curve, and a lack of inventions by black people. I was in my element.
After two weeks of observation I was ready to initiate my plan, and I began to speak to the members of the community, leaving my camera off to avoid the instant ban they gave to other black people who dared to enter the community. Things went quite well, they didn't suspect a thing, a few hours later I finally revealed myself on camera and almost immediately was subjected to an onslaught of racist debauchery before getting banned.
I was a bit surprised, but not all that much. Afterall, they were a tight knit community and were serious about their "homogeneity". What did surprise me was that I was shortly unbanned, and it was by none other than the room owner himself, who apparently took a liking to me.
I spent the next few days being generally nice to everyone, standing up for black rights whenever the subject came up from the more racist members, to their annoyance, but soon I was accepted into the community as a sort of "token", their only way to mentally accept me.
Part of every day life in /canada was posting dirty videos, making fun of the sexually inexperienced in the community, and making anyone who was even slightly overweight cry, as well as women who weren't considered attractive to the moderators; unless, of course, they lifted their shirts to show what was underneath. I was kind of used to these types of people from my 4chan subculture, so I was able to adapt to the juvenile trends.
I soon made friends with some of the nicer members, which further dampened how put off I was by some of their actions. Soon, after a number of room changes due to internal political strife, I became a moderator of one of /canada's incarnations: /youmadbro.
Up until this point, aside from a comment here and there, I was able to maintain some level of being nice, at least everyone around me thought so, but after becoming a moderator I turned into a monster, to everyone's shock, even the members of that community, and much to the displeasure of the members of my radio community, Elite Peeps.
By this time trolling, the act of inciting a negative emotional response in targeted individuals, everyone with xenophobic fervor and manipulating those we deemed weak minded was no longer just for entertainment, it became a way of life. If you wanted to rise in power and notoriety you had to prove just how much of a degenerate you could be. The more tears generated the better. It wasn't long before I was in the ranks of some of the worst members of the community, constantly trying to find new ways to bring shock and entertainment. No one was off limits from our berating.
Including the mentally challenged, and children.
I can't express the guilt I sometimes feel for this period of time. I became very selfish, angry, perverse in mind and heart, and extremely arrogant. It was around this time that I had lost my faith in God and became a pantheist, which really didn't help matters since I felt there was no real authority to moral actions but humanity, and as a human myself I set my own rules.
Hubris at its finest.
The only thing that kept me in check was my racial insecurity. Periodically my friends would get bored and turn their attacks on me, "playfully" calling me a nigger or worse. I always had a come back ready, but it did bother me for some time. Often, my insecurity would take head and I'd go into long rants about race relations, the history of racism and it's establishment in North America, thinking it was my mission to educate the masses about the socio-economic realities of racial disparity.
As full of myself as I was, if I could go back to the me then I'd say I was quite the insecure degenerate that defined the word nigger in almost every sense. I was a burden to society with my perverse nature, unsanitary habits, and constant bullying of those who contributed more than I did by simply being kinder than I was.
Soon after I met a girl.
Out of boredom I began to channel hop, going to different communities on tinychat, and started moderating a room I temporarily starting frequenting called lemonudes. Although on the surface they seemed like a decent group compared to my regular community, that community contained some of the worst perverts I had ever seen. There were many times when I felt like I had to protect some of the girls from the black mail being dished out against them, and soon began to take on a strange parental position with that community, inflating my already over filled ego. It also allowed me to feel like I wasn't so bad because I never blackmailed anyone into doing anything. It's there that I met a young woman whose wit matched her beauty. At that time, she had to be the most beautiful girl I had laid eyes on.
We clicked, unfortunately she wasn't all that into me. She soon developed a crush on another member, who she also soon lost interest in. Then she brought a friend.
Her friend was a sweet girl, also from the same country, she was very reserved, kind, and insanely patient. Shortly after I got over my old crush and asked her about her friend, and was surprised to find out that she was also interested in me.
I was happy.
Although she was from Taiwan, she was planning to move to the United States to start college, her school happened to not be too far from where was (about 5 hours) and we thought it would be a great idea to meet. I told her that I liked her, but I did not want to be official until I actually physically met her, she agreed.
When we met it was an instant match, we had good chemistry and we were completely into each other, we made it official after our first night in the hotel I booked for our stay.
She soon learned about the community I was part of and surprisingly got along with everyone from there, despite her kindness. I was usually really nice around her, but back to my mean and perverse ways once she was away. Sometimes she'd witness my mean streak, but she largely didn't mind so long as she was my number 1 girl. And she was.
But that's where the good things ended.
Although we got along great, I was still a no good bum who didn't save money and was just being a bastard on the internet for the majority of the time. The only difference was that I was now a bastard with a girlfriend and was getting laid. More fuel to make fun of my internet rivals who didn't have that.
About a month later I lost my job. I spent a lot of time trying to cater to my girlfriend and my internet habits, as well as laziness that prevented me from wanting to leave on time for work. Not to mention a slew of car problems that caused more than a tolerable amount of latenesses and absences. This at 26 years of age, well outside of the "young and dumb" stage. I was humiliated, so I lied to everyone and told them that I was laid off because I wanted to move to Chicago but they didn't have an availability at their Chicago branch, so they opted to lay me off. The lie was not questioned because I was able to receive compensation without contest from my job since they really did like the way I worked when I actually got there.
(Some of you didn't know about this until today, and if I hadn't told you the truth I apologize for lying about this to you)
When I was removed from the building I felt like a zombie. I had no where to go, yet I did not want to go home. Going home meant having to face the reality of what happened, and it meant having to explain to everyone why I was home early on a weekday. I had to come up with a less humiliating reason for why I was no longer working before I could even think of heading home in my defeat.
I took that opportunity to make some necessary car repairs to my old Nissan, it had been reliable for the past 5 years and still had some more years left in it, but as an old car it had its issues. I waited for the mechanic to finish up his repairs to the electrical system, then had one of his guys perform an oil change and tire rotation, all the while thinking of a good story to tell everyone. I eventually settled with a lay off due to having to move, the CEO was doing rounds and made some cuts; which wasn't entirely untrue, but it did not apply to my situation. After paying the man I drove home to explain my story.
I had told my girlfriend at the time that I lost my job a bit earlier, she never asked the reason, but she was very kind and sympathetic, which I appreciated. Soon after, we took that opportunity to see a lot more of each other since the distance was starting to build some frustration.
My parents bought my story and since I was on unemployment I took my time to start my job search (degenerate) using it as an opportunity to spend more quality time with my girlfriend and being an asshole on tinychat. Although I was jobless, I had a better sex life than most of the other people that I made fun of, so I didn't feel a need to reevaluate myself. My girlfriend also didn't seem to mind either and relished at the added time we had together, so I felt almost no social consequence to my life style or behavior. I was also getting much better in bed, so my confidence was ironically through the roof.
Despite being horrible before, I somehow started getting worse. I started to desire more sexual fulfillment and I was very popular on tinychat. A group of our friends soon had a meet up in Las Vegas which turned out successful. They did all kinds of crazy things and it looked like they all had a blast, I was envious because it was exactly the kind of debauchery I wanted as a last blast of fun before inevitably getting more serious about my life. Several months of unemployment was finally starting to get to me, and I was starting to become less attracted to my girlfriend's kind, but lukewarm personality.
I job hunted pretty heavily for the next few months to get the ball rolling, and was surprised to get a call from my old job that saw my application in rotation online. They asked if I wanted my old job back and I said yes. They had all kinds of conditions for me to follow, like an extended probationary period and an agreement to not be late or I would be terminated as I was before, and a reset to my previous seniority. I would be starting fresh with my relationship with the company. I complied, and soon after my new schedule created enough strain between my girlfriend and I that we split soon afterward. I kind of felt like we only worked because I had all the time in the world to cater to her chaotic school and party schedule. I felt like in order to progress I needed a stronger, more opinionated girlfriend that added to my life instead of just mildly agreeing to my inactions.
But not yet.
Since I was now single I wanted to have fun. I announced to everyone in our tinychat community that we would be having a Las Vegas meet up to remember. We would go to Vegas and celebrate years of our crimes against humanity with alcohol and possible fornication of epic proportions. I also declared that I would be drunk for the entire duration of our one week vacation together. Everyone seemed excited about the plan and we all began to save for the coming trip.
For me, Vegas was to be my last moment of glorious immaturity before graduating to the inevitable life of adulthood that I was already very late on. I was tired of living with my parents and being a college drop out. With this, I was going to leave the internet world behind in flames of glory and have a crazy story to tell my future grand children.
I wasn't the best drinker. In fact, to say I was a lightweight would have been a slight understatement. I couldn't hold down my vodka if you put a cork in my throat. And the heavier spirits were even worse, so I knew I had to begin training myself to not make a mess of things during my Vegas adventure.
Thus began the box wine era.
(Take a break, you've read a lot)
One of my buddies on tinychat, though short in stature, was quite the veteran in the world of drinking spirits, and soon after he, and some others, joined the drinking of box wine that I indulged in on a nightly basis. It was cheap and didn't have much alcohol, so it was perfect to start the liver and body training. Around this time I started visiting a tinychat room called teatime chat, I had been there before, but I was coming in more frequently because there were tons of babes and the conversations were kind of nice. It was also fun to troll the room sometimes because they were even more hypocritical than I was with their motto of "attractive people surrounded by intelligent conversation", the women were attractive, but the men who enforced those rules looked like they barely evolved from Cromagnon. I had to give them a piece of my (drunken) mind.
And then I met her.
I made it a habit to harass the women in ttime because I figured that, since they were mostly normal people and out of my league, not to mention I didn't want to do distance again, I thought it would be fun to be a perverted menace to them. But none stood out like she did.
She was really chatty and had an opinion about everything, and seemed to be easy to anger, but I couldn't deny that her glowing blue eyes and stunning beauty got to me on a fundamental level. She was literally the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on. And for that reason I was driven to harass her the most. Every time she paid attention to me my heart skipped a beat. I said some of the most terrible and perverted things to her, and she argued back! Words cannot describe how attractive she was (and still is...) to me.
After getting banned from ttime yet again for my trolling, I retreated back to my old community and announced in my drunken state that I would get her Skype. I had a lot of girls on my Skype and I spoke to a few of them, but with her I just wanted to see if I could actually get close to her and maybe be friends. As much as I harassed her, I recognized that she had the qualities that I wanted in a lady for my future, I didn't know what I was going to accomplish, I didn't know where she lived and I certainly didn't think she would give me a chance, but I did want to get close to her. She was different, too powerful, and far too beautiful.
A couple of friends decided to go back into ttime with me to offer their support, we also took a couple more drinks of our choice of alcoholic beverage for the added courage before our attack. I went into ttime and gave an ultimatum: I refused to stop being a belligerent jerk in the room and leave until I got her Skype information.
She actually gave it to me.
To say my heart soared would be another understatement. Holy shit, that gorgeous lady with the sassy attitude actually gave me her Skype!
God, our conversations, we had a love hate relationship from the get go. I wanted to be kind and sweet to her on Skype, and I definitely wanted to get to know her, but she still sort of hated me and only gave me her Skype out of curiosity and because she wanted to keep arguing. She was also a bit attracted to me. We had our tension, but eventually we really got along.
(I'll write more later, I'm getting tired.)
