falling in love with Mac
from AntBlog701

falling in love with Mac

Well, this is not a new story, one story I read few years back. It's rather interesting...

It's about a relationship between two gay men, Mark lives in New York, Bryan in Austin, Texas.

They had romantic candlelight dinner, via webcam. They slept together, next to webcams each.

Mark met Bryan online. Their first date was a romantic candlelight dinner, via webcam. In New York, Mark lit a candle and ate Chinese takeout, while Bryan did the same 1,700 miles away in Texas.

Soon they started sleeping together: Mark put his monitor and webcam next to his bed so he could watch Bryan sleeping, and vice versa.

When they eventually met in person, about a year later, the relationship fizzled out. That's when Mark realized it wasn't Bryan he fancied, it was his Mac.

> Wired News has a story on this.
> Mark Allen recorded on his own website

And it's not easy to have cyber-relationship. You have to look good. All the time.

If I could count the amount of "real looking" frozen shots of me that I broadcast on my website during the year I was seeing Bryan I'd need Deep Blue. Thousands of people look at my webcam every day... but often I knew Bryan was watching me so it was like I "had" to look my best. And this was easy... anyone can do it. There was shot after shot of me on my cam, probably shirtless... perfectly groomed, perfectly lit (oh you have NO idea), preened and buffed or perfectly disheveled - while I acted all unaware of the camera. My cam galleries contain loads of captures of me adjusting my pants, reaching across the table, grabbing for a pencil or taking my shirt off with my back to the camera, looking oh-so casual and unaware. Meanwhile in-between each shot I was checked my image obsessively in the cam viewer before the remote snapped a picture every 60 seconds and broadcast it to the world (of which Bryan was the only one I was often aware of). Although the shots looked like I was in motion, I was actually POSING like that, frozen... checking how I looked at each and every angle in that precious 60 seconds I had before the cam snapped again (sometimes averting my eyes away from the direction of the monitor just in time). Oh I became a pro. And all this obsessive superficiality was for Bryan, so he could get to know the "real" me. I know for a fact that Bryan didn't do this on his cam, at least he claims not to have... but he edited himself in other areas - of that I'm sure. And all this manipulation was just on our end, we could also control how we perceived one another.