After some recent experiences, good and not so good, while tramping about in the new-age wilderness of personal web sites, I have some observations that perhaps may be worth trying to pull together. I do this not because I suspect anything will be any clearer to anyone who may, perchance, read my observations but for my own meager attempt to intellectualize a phenomenon that completely befuddles me. This is one of my many character flaws; if I don’t grasp a concept in short order, I beat it to death with a cerebral ballpen hammer until I either conquer it or it is no longer interesting. In this discourse, I will make a futile effort to apply logic to something that, for me, more resembles Hamlet’s warning to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In other words, I feel very much like Horatio and my "philosophy" is singularly incomplete.

A few months back, primarily at the behest of a new young employee, I created a profile on Myspace.com. As many (if not all) of you know, there has been an explosion of Internet sites that cater to people, like myself, who have an occasional need to fill a portion of our ever-increasing "leisure time." With the availability of posting our pictures, thoughts, opinions, hopes and dreams, we have achieved (at least superficially) the mirage of greater connectedness in an increasingly isolated world. This, in an of itself, it not a bad thing. Even passing exchanges of messages or ideas with other people around the country or the world can, when done in a civil and cordial fashion, fill a palpable need in many.

Of course, there are diverse reasons for joining the online communities of Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, et al. Some appear to have a powerful desire to be "noticed." This might be rooted in a deep longing to actually become famous and gain some degree of "celebrity." Clearly, in this day and age when there is an absolute glut of media outlets all starving to fill air time, achieving celebrity status has become almost routine and mundane. At least it has to those of us observing the sheer madness that pervades many of the videos on YouTube.com and elsewhere. A lonely teenager in a small hamlet (pun intended) in Tennessee has turned a tearful lament over the treatment of Britney Spears into instant celebrity status which, apparently, he has desperately sought. This stunt was possibly inspired by the success of another unknown rising to a degree of public awareness (and, one might predict, a contract for some broadcast network somewhere) by posting video that purported to be a teenage female’s adolescent angst. It seems there is never a shortage in the supply of people, young and old, who want some measure of recognition and fame, no matter how fleeting it may be. If you were to peruse the available antics displayed online in video, you would soon conclude that there is no limit to the degree to which some people will go with their actions for the same purpose.

Another subset of the multitude of web pages produced by and dedicated to individuals are not searching for fame but for something more basic: sex. Eschewing the costs of the traditional "find your perfect match" sites (Match.com, eHarmony.com, chemistry.com, et al), more and more lonely (or simply bored) people are posting personal web pages principally with the intent of finding new "relationships." Whereas I am quite sure that traditional sources of dating partners (single’s bars, blind dates, work and the like) are not going broke from business stolen away by online chatting, it appears to me that an increasing number of people are using this new medium in the hunt for relationships and "hook ups" (if I am using the vernacular correctly).

This is where the game, at least for fledglings such as I, gets more than a smidgen out of our depth. It appears to the uninitiated as if there is an entirely new language evolving on these sites. If not a new language, a encrypted syntax that, for naive users can be more than a little mystifying. It is also a place that, in my experience, the male is at a distinct disadvantage. Allow me to elaborate.

In the face-to-face world, men are quite skilled in sensing the intent of male behavior. We have, hard-wired in our DNA over the millennia, recognition patterns for when males are threatening us and when they are not. We can rely on tried and true visual and auditory clues to know, for the most part, what actions males are contemplating for us and we can make appropriate preparations and responses to these signals. It’s a fairly unconscious process.

Females, on the other hand, have (it appears to me) a completely different set of signals and behavioral responses. When they say a dress "looks nice" on another female, they may really be saying something entirely different. Females are, by nature (and in my opinion), much more subtle and, often, cryptic than men. And, when the females mutate from the hunted to the huntress, the males of our species are disarmed and - forgive the choice of words - quite impotent.

These differences are tremendously amplified in the online world. The supplementary clues - visual and auditory - that help the hapless male interpret female messages are absent. When you add in the X-Factor of the female not as prey but as huntress, we men can not understand the terrain but we can often not see the traps being set all around us. On the Internet, we are reduced to the tenuous and thoroughly flawed process of deciphering intentions from the written word. And here, gentle reader, lies the serpent.

The book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" would possibly be of some use. I have never read it and, sadly, it shows. When I get a message from a female on the MySpace site I have created, I seem to step all over myself when it comes to expressing what I mean to express. As a for instance, I once had a message from an obviously lonely and searching female nee huntress that, to my untrained eyes and mind, said (to summarize): "I am lonely. I am looking for a man to protect and provide for me. Are you him?" This inquiry was clear enough and my reply was forthright and effective. I never heard from this particular lady again.

As I strode mightily up to my neck in the treacherous quicksand that is the Internet mating rituals, my ill-founded bravado soon arose to bite me on the derriere. Several weeks after my deft handling of what I will hereafter refer to as the "puppy dog’s" inquiry, I received another message from a lady that had read some of my blog entries and decided she wanted to establish a dialogue. At least, this was how my male brain read her first message. It was innocent enough and asked simply if the picture I had on my profile page was of me. Since it was of me at age 2 or 3, I replied innocently enough, in the affirmative. I thanked the lady for her visit to my profile and wished her well. This time, my reply brought about a series of messages that erased all hope I had developed of mastering the landscape before me. More on this particular encounter - hereafter, to be referred to as the "coffee lady" - shortly.

The point is that when we males do this sort of thing we - at least those of us who are entirely unattuned to the female dialect - never give the matter of a message’s "intentions" a moments thought. A message says what it says or one would think. I have subsequently been informed how very wrong I am in this cursory assumption. An acquaintance (a fellow digital traveler of the female persuasion) who has been on Myspace for much longer than I, informs me that, as a general rule, when someone visits and takes time to send a message it has more than a passing "Hello, have a good life" purpose. Furthermore, when the message includes a question, it has even more significance. As I understand it, there is a distinct difference between the following two messages:

Versus this:

According to my "expert," these messages have wholly different intents. The first is simply a "Howdy! You write good." (in Southern vernacular) and does not ask for or require a response. You can ignore the message or, if you are so inclined, say "Thank you for your visit" as a reply. The sticky wicket comes in the second message. If a message includes a question (according to my learned source), then this is an invitation to additional conservation.

And, for the uninitiated, that invitation for additional conversation can, itself, imply several different possibilities. In its simplest form, it may be merely an attempt for the intellectual discussion of issues that might be of interest to both parties. In its most complicated form, it might be the overture of a sophisticated minuet called "the mating ritual." The perplexing part is that, often enough, the male in this exchange does not have a clue as to what he might be stepping into.

Returning to my second personal example - "coffee lady" - you will recall that her initial message did, indeed, include a question which, as we have now determined, means something other than "Howdy. You write good." So, after answering her initial inquiry, I was asked - in the very next message - if I would like to meet for coffee. I am currently in a relationship and, gentleman that I am, I demurred at the request. But, evidently, this was not direct enough. The "coffee lady" then asked if I was really in a relationship (my profile clearly stated that I was) or if this was "something I told all the girls" that viewed my profile...and when could we have coffee? This is the perplexing world of the online community.

I doubt that I will ever acquire the insights needed to function with any degree of aplomb in this environment of nuance and innuendo. Apparently, I am too "left brain dominant" to think in the creative and subtle syntax of a universe devoid of visual and auditory clues. And a major part of the burden under which I labor is the ageless confusion that exists between what the two sexes say and what they actually mean. Shakespeare and most every author since has made a living lampooning the comedic tragedy that results from this unbridgeable chasm.

Men may, indeed, be from Mars. Evidently, I am from the boondocks of that planet. But, at least we redneck Martians mean what we say and, occasionally, say what we mean.