10
Tuesday, November 30.1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Techno-lust lights up the screens in on-line dating
.The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Susan MacCoy, a 46-year-old hairdresser, steps into a room filled with regulars and a couple of newcomers. She glances around, notices a couple of guys she has dated and lights up a cigarette.
Men call her "goddess." Women do too, though few have actually seen her. MacCoy chats, flirts and has a good time — all without leaving her home, all via computer.
Computer bulletin boards are being called the bar scene of the '90s, an electronic forum where people share their most intimate—and often sexual—thoughts.
"it's tech-lust," MacCoy said. "It's the big bar in cyberspace, except you don't have to do your hair, put on your makeup, and you can show up anytime you want."
Hy Roseman, 36, of Schaumburg, Ill., said he and his wife signed into an electronic forum for excitement. "There's so much flirting going on, it's just like being in a singles bar," he said.
MacCoy and Roseman are among several million people who subscribe to consumer-oriented, on-line services. They range from the thousands of small bulletin boards run by
hobbyists to big commercial enterprises such as Prodigy, CompuServe, America OnLine and GEnie.
Some services offer news and information, let a subscriber pay bills, trade stocks and shop.
Many also offer "live" interaction, with individuals and groups trading messages while logged on. That's where on-line dating goes on.
Critics call it a "chilling" trend that leads to broken hearts.
Boosters say it's good, clean fun and, just possibly, a way to meet the person of your dreams.
The setup is eerily similar to bars. Most interactive, on-line services charge men fees ranging from $10 to 600 an hour. Women get in free.
The whopping phone bill that comes from using a modem to talk to people thousands of miles away can give users a headache to top the worst hangover. Although some networks have local phone numbers, many charge fees that depend on the distance between users.
Conversations range from playful banter to pornographic come-ons. Various companies offer "alternative lifestyles" services, including chaitines for gays and lesbians.
Ron Peiril, who owns a Chicago-based computer bulletin board for adults called Compu-Erotaia, said many people signed on to avoid the bar scene.
"There are a lot of people on-line who are sort of disillusioned with the singles bars or meeting people through work or school," he said. "On-line, you get to know the person from the inside out. You see what a person is really like on the inside before you ever see the outside features, like how good-looking a person is."
Psychologist Michael Broder called that howwash.
"It's chilling. For a lot of people, it's a fantasy life," said Broder, an author on the subject. "People have to be advised they can't take this stuff too seriously. I've heard of a lot of hearts being broken.
"No real person can measure up to personalities one sees in computer messages. When these people try to have a real relationship, they're going to wind up feeling as though they have been cheated."
Indeed, in a widely publicized case in California, several women who used an on-line service compared notes and discovered a computer lothario had professed undying
And the Justice Department recently warned that parents should keep a close eye on young computer junkies to ensure that they're not contacted by pedophiles via electronic mail. On-line users say the lesswidest come-ons often are from youngsters who use their parents' sign-ons.
love to each of them
Sociologist Bernard Beck of Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, called on-line dating a natural progression of technology and the social scene.
"The fact is that there's been a continuing problem of how people who don't have stable social connections and who are adults can find and meet people," he says. "For a while, it was fitness — going to the gym to meet people."
"Now, it's the development of new technologies that allow you to stay safely at home and do your business. It's chilling, though, that our general social world has become more frightening to us, and we are kind of huddling behind our safe four walls," he said.
He said fear of crime and catching AIDS likely are behind the increase in on-line users.
Rebekah Goodwin, 39, said she met her husband, Peter, through an early service provided by America OnLine, which has some 800,000 subscribers.
"We became really good friends on-line," she says. "He was in Massachusetts, I was in California. We actually had, I believe, fallen in love on-line without ever meeting."
The two decided to take a two-week cross-country car trip, later developed a phone relationship and three years later were married.
Mrs. Goodwin, who had a bilateral mastecomy and calls herself "mildly agoraphobic" said that without the help of a computer, she likely would be alone now.
"I felt very unlovable, and I certainly wouldn't have given anyone in person a chance to get close enough to me to fall in love," she said. "Since it was on-line, we were able to interact as two people, rather than two bodies. I think on-line services provide a really unique opportunity if you use them wisely."
Weird: No respect
Her view is echoed by MacCoy, who owns a hair salon in Chicago. She said she met her boyfriend through her subscription to an online service.
"What people need to realize is that once you get into a real-life relationship, there's work to be done there," she said.
Continued from Page 9.
-er by renting it out during down times to local farmers, so they could use it to scan pigs' bodies to assure that only the meatiest ones were allowed to breed.
A politician who's anti-politicians?
In April, Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker vetoed a bill that would have encouraged the state's public schools to use important public documents in class. He said he specifically objected to students' being exposed to the Congressional Record, which he said contained "bizarre polemics on religious and political positions."
Different strokes for different folks
In September, Warrant Officer Gregory Crandall was buried with full military honors in Arlington Cemetery over the protests of his family. The Pentagon said that Crandall died in Laos in 1971, but the family continues to hope that he survived because the only part of his body recovered was a tooth, which was placed alone in a full-sized steel casket for the burial.
Texas twine ball squashes Kansans' pride
Cawker City has tizzy; Ripley's won't believe their ball is biggest
The Associated Press
"The question is, is there any point in having the world's second-largest ball of twine?" asked Cawker City resident Merle Schreuber. "I think we've been resting on our laurels for too long. Maybe it's time to get this
CAWKER CITY, Kan. — A bail of twine in Texas has stolen an honor held for more than 30 years by this small southeast Kansas town, and residents here are vowing to win back their title.
town back in gear."
The new world's largest ball of twine is the work of J.C. Payne of Valley View, Texas. His ball of twine, measured at 10 feet high, 41/2 feet around and 13,000 pounds, was named largest by Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, which is building a museum around the ball set to open next year in Branson, Mo.
Ripley's bought the ball of twine for more than $20,000.
Cawker City's ball measures 40 feet around and weighs 16,292 pounds. Its unofficial caretaker says the Texastwine ball might be judged bigger, but it's not pure twine.
"Iheard it had plastic twine and all kinds of twine," Harold Reined said.
"But our ball is all sisal. We're all sisal."
Sisal is a strong fiber related to henequen, which comes from the agave plant grown in Mexico. Many farmers use it to wrap hales.
Edward L. Meyer of Ripley's has seen balls of twine in Crowker City; Darwin, Minn. and Valley Views, Texas. He said all three were big, but the Texas ball was definitely the biggest.
"He literally stopped just when he got big enough to be the biggest," Meyer said of the Texas twine ball's creator. "He was motivated purely by a competitive urge to be the biggest."
People in Darwin once said their ball was 40 feet around and weighed
8. 7 tons, but Reling says those measurements were taken when the ball was wet.
Ripley's judgment of the twine balls will not be the last word on the subject, most Cawker Citians said.
"I'm sure, even as we speak, someone is out there feverishly stringing twine together, making a bigger ball," Ripley's Meyer said. "It's only a matter of time before this record is broken."
In Cawker City, work on the twine ball will begin again at the August "Twine-a-thon" picnic, which has been a tourist attraction since 1961.
"I'm sure we'll wrap a little faster this summer and make up for lost ground," Shirley Laft said.
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