My Social Media: ICQ

I've only recently realised that my experience of social networks dates back to 2000. It was in that year that I finally had an internet connection installed at home. A family friend, a tall well-built guy in specs with a wild mane of red hair, a huge fan of Tolkien, suggested installing this little program called ICQ. He swore on its beauty and the ease of use; in particular, he said that he used it to chat with a lady from Argentina who helped him to learn and master his English.

I jumped up at the opportunity to master my both English and French. And at the beginning I was well rewarded. I met a few very interesting people and made fantastic friends with them. Unfortunately, most of those contacts were interrupted for one reason or another. But while they lasted - during 2000, 2001 and even 2002 - it was good.

In the years that followed I got on to ICQ briefly a few times. There was never enough time to use it to chat for as long as I used to in 2000. However short were my spells on ICQ between 2002 and 2008, each time I went there I felt the palpable change of focus. In 2004 or 2005 I would be inundated with messages offering language courses. I went there again earlier this week for a scheduled meeting with a Russian friend, and I decided to stay and to see how the focus has changed.

This time I'm inundated with messages from people who are clearly out there for dating. One of them told me he was alone for six weeks and was finding it very hard. I explained that I wasn't actually looking for a date, so I personally couldn't help him. The dialogue ensued:

He: Can we be friends?
I: Sure, why not.
He: But bear in mind that you won't be able to change your mind later.
I: How do you mean? (I was sincerely puzzled).
He: I mean that you won't be able to ask me out, to go on a date with me...

If there is anything I do like about messaging services it is their potential to help you learn other people's attitudes and reactions. At the end of 2002 I spoke to a Belgian father of two. We eventually fell into discussing the entirely disgraceful plans to invade Iraq, and I remember his very passionate speech about democracy, anti-democracy and the oil war. A very different situation occured a couple of years later. I was chatting to a guy from somewhere in Europe who was an avid language learner and worked at the bank. All went well until my remark that a job at the bank must be a serious one. Maybe it was one of those recurring comments that one might hear from everyone they know. Such comments do indeed tend to ennerve you. In my case the person was deeply offended - so much so that our "friendship" stopped there and then.

This was the most dramatic of my ICQ "flops", although it wasn't the only one. When I have just started using ICQ eight years ago, I was talking to this guy from the Netherlands. Somehow we got to talking about our houses and what we had on the walls in our rooms. I lived in a very small flat: by this country's standards it's a one-bedroom flat, which housed three women, one female cat and one female dog. And in the bigger room on the wall there hang this portrait of me. It was the first ever portrait of myself, and it was my parent's choice to hang it, since it was drawn in graphite. But my friend didn't know this nor did he see my portrait. Without giving it much thought I told my friend that I had my portrait on the wall. "It must be that you love yourself too much", he replied with an air of reproach.

There are a plenty of stories of my ICQ escapades. I chatted to a British father who was stoned and also bored to death and went to ICQ while his wife and her sister looked after his baby. I had to listen to a tearful story of my compatriot who married a British guy; the guy seemed to be more excited at the prospect of buying himself a motorbike rather than going to Venice. I helped a businessman from Belarus to obtain the phone numbers for an English bank. I helped another guy from Belarus to enquire about tin whistles. But one contact I really regret losing is Reza Kazem-zadeh, a scholar from Paris who studied - or so he said - homosexuality in Islamic societies. We've never been more than just ICQ friends, but we conversed primarily in French with such ease and on such variety of subjects that I remember about it even eight years later.

The most recent conversation I had with an ICQ user who knocked on my virtual door involved Egypt:

He: Have you been to Egypt?
I: No, I saw the Sphynx many times on pictures but never "in the flesh".
He: Nobody saw it in the flesh.
I: Well, Oedipus did, but then it's him who drove the poor creature to suicide.

For all the things I enjoy about ICQ there are a few things I really don't like. I don't like it when I set my status to "busy" but people keep contacting me and keep chatting even after I spelled it out that I was busy. I don't like it when they start asking if I am still busy - as if I am obliged to talk to them, or if I am the only "fish in the sea" they can talk to. And I certainly don't like when they assume that when I say that I'm busy or that I'm not looking for a date I'm in fact flirting, so they persist. I could very well have given up the view that ICQ can be just a messaging service to connect with friends had I not had friends there and had I not known that it was possible to only use ICQ for a friendly chat.

Then, of course, you can tell me that we don't need ICQ when we have Facebook...