Cheating on the Screen

by Sophia Lieo

Making friends on-line is getting more and more popular. Yet the question of possible frauds has also begun to capture the public's imagination. It is reported in Time magazine: A 43-year-old Bostonian who thought he was having a hot fling with a 23-year-old woman discovered to his dismay that "she" was an 80-year-old man in a Miami nursing home. Seemingly, this old man cheated the Bostonian. However, this so-called cheating on the Net exposes one of the common prejudices in humanity: that is, in short, the old saying that "One swallow makes a summer."

Basically, without face-to-face meeting, people can still exchange we they think and feel by the words shown on the computer screen. Those who are temperamentally compatible will naturally become friends and even fall in love with each other. And let's not forget that human beings are multi-dimensional creatures. If this old man in the story truly has feminine sexual passion in his heart, as he so aptly expresses it on the screen, he can hardly be taken as a liar.

He was merely being himself.

Perhaps it was exactly because he was such a man of ripe experience in life that he could understand the needs and desires of a man in his forties and was successful in satisfying the latter's sexual fancy. Therefore, the young man should at least appreciate the older man's deep understanding of human nature and his rich imagination. Calling it "A cheating" seems exaggerating. After all, if this Bostonian's purpose of making friends with a woman on the Net was nothing but lust for a woman's body, then perhaps his own motivation and supposedly sincere communication fall somewhat distant from honesty too.

Cyberspace is a world beyond actual sight. If one sticks to "One swallow makes a summer," I think it is not necessary for him to make friends on screen because at last everything on the net will be unreal to him. On the other hand, cyberspace is a brand-new world for people to experience human inner thoughts and feelings rather than the outward appearances. I will encourage you to "cheat" on the screen if you think it's a good place to develop your personal quality, imagination and creativity.

回上頁