Has the Internet Reconnected You with Someone Unexpected?

[mic of orion]

interesting and nice thread.


Contacted by a school m8, he looked me up not on myspeace but on facebook, mic of orion (same nick all over, look me up if you want to find out more about me). Anyways, I spoke to him over phone, he is married, has 3 kids. Another m8 contacted me this time not over facebook but by forums, we played some game while back (4-5 years ago) and I used same nick, so he looked for me, wanted to meet bc he was in London, anyways he registered on this forum I am member of and left nice pm in my inbox,. Suffice to say we met.

I didn't stay in touch with my school m8's, sad to hear some of you had bad experience in your schools, you'll always have idiots and bigots, there are no exceptions where ever you live. I was approached once by a bigot who was like 4 years older than me from my school, he wanted something, anyways I ignored the f**k, never spoke to him, he just sent email to me, not sure how he found out my email, suffice to say, I changed my email after that.

O yes, some really stupid I***t from my school got in touch with me, I saw him like once on a street and I said hi, he ignored me, like I was infected, he didn't want to know me even though he recognized me, he was with his mom and dad as well, we were once friends btw. And than he called me like year later (not sure how he found my phone number) and he was like all apologetic, but I didn't like his attitude way back than and I just told him, not to bother calling me again, I will make sure I never call him or speak to him again, do I hate snobs and ppl who think they are better than you bc of some predisposition or w/e. BTW only reason he called bc he needs a job and found out I was big shot in my Add firm (I work in media).

 

[Emher]

I do admit to keeping tabs on my ex from time to time via the web. The kicker was when I found out that her new hubby looks exactly like, only about 60 pounds lighter

Other then that not so much. Maybe I should. There where lots of bad people in my past, but there where lots of nice ones too. And I just did a google search of one of my better female friends and found a facebook page, and damn she grew up nice!

It's just...I sorta hate all these fads with the internet. Myface, Spacebook, Whebo or whatever. I don't even have an MSN account, not even via Miranda.

For those of you who actually have it, is Facebook any useful?

 

[Kryton]

I may be the last American with Internet access to trouble with either Facebook or MySpace. I've never (intentionally) visited either site unless linked there (which I've since learned to avoid).

 

[Balrog]

I've contacted and been contacted by many people through Facebook, etc. It's been a real lark. I've kept in touch with most people I wanted to over the years. It's been great to hear from a few people who were really close friends and reconnect. But I can say there is something to keeping the past in the past with some others. Some people who I haven't seen in 20 years or more have been kind of douchey about their reminiscing.

 

[The Master of Tarquin Hill]

Several years ago my mom (in her 60's) was going through some papers that belonged to an aunt of hers that had recently passed away. In one of the documents was a name that she didn't recognize. She had me look it up online and I found a phone number for the person on the west coast, we live on the east coast.

My mom, who had always thought that she was an only child, called this person and found out that they were half-sisters. My new aunt, who is 15yrs younger than my mom, came out a couple of years ago. They also talk on the phone every weekend. I'm glad I could help my mom find her sister.

As for myself, I have found several people online that I hadn't talked to for years. Some I chose to contact, some I didn't. One of the people I did not contact I found through my states public judicial database. He had been charged with 2nd and 3rd degree sex offenses along with assault and performing a perverted act in public. I don't think I'll be going to the bar with him anymore!

 

[TrekNut87]

I reconnected with an old friend of mine on facebook 3 years ago. We hadn't seen each other in about 10 years.

 

[JoeZhang]

People keep asking me to go onto facebook and stuff, but the fact is - I think you are a douchebag, that's why I don't keep in touch.

 

[Ohappydagger]

I may be the last American with Internet access to trouble with either Facebook or MySpace. I've never (intentionally) visited either site unless linked there (which I've since learned to avoid).

Nope I'm with you. I don't do sites like that, expressly because I don't want to "keep in touch" or "reconnect" with most of the people I've known in my life. I don't want people looking me up. Really. I'd be vaguely interested to know what all the little dickwads I was in fourth grade with are doing now that we're approaching 30... but do I want to be in contact with them? No. So there.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

A psycho ex-girlfriend found me via Facebook once and sent me a string of very strange emails, all of which I ignored.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

I have a new story to tell on this topic.

Back when I was in university, I spent a lot of time (probably too much) reading Usenet newsgroups. There was one in particular that I read, but never posted to, called soc.motss, which was a group for discussion of LGBT rights. I would occasionally email people who posted there, though I never posted myself because I wasn't out yet and didn't want anyone who knew me to find out. I ended up actually meeting one of those folks when he moved from Vancouver to Toronto for a few years, but I haven't seen him in years. However, I'm not posting this to talk about him.

There was one guy who was a Ph.D. student at Purdue University with whom I had a lengthy correspondence. I hadn't thought about him in years, and in fact, I had even forgotten his name, but the other night, for no particular reason, I thought about him. Well, about four hours ago, the following arrived in my Inbox:

My name is (name removed) and if I have the correct person, you might remember me as a pen pal from 1988-89. I was taking some time off this weekend browsing through some 20 year old correspondence. Given how far the web has come, I was able to get some contact information. According to your online resume, a 1990 graduation from U. Waterloo looks correct.

I was going to Purdue University working on my PhD in chemical engineering at the time and just starting to come out. Soc.motss and friends like you were very important to me and I thought it would be nice to reconnect. If you remember and would like to catch up, I would appreciate a reply to this email.

Maybe I'm psychic and he picked up my mental transmission wondering about him? Anyhow, I'll send him a response tomorrow when I'm dealing with some other email that's going to require more than a one-sentence response.

 

[Kryton]

Wow! That's exactly the type of thing I was curious about when I posted this thread in the first place. Nice.

 

[trampledamage]

Awesome! That's a nice polite reconnection attempt. I hope he's doing well for himself.

 

[StarTrek1701]

I never joined My Space because of the flashy and stupid server load times. After Facebook went public, I joined in. Put a picture of myself and my wife, just basic info about school, birth date, etc. 3 days later, I find 9 different "friend requests" from good friends I haven't seen since elementary and middle school. Linking up with them and others I found later was a very emotional experience.

 

[USS Triumphant]

There was a girl I was friends with in jr. high who went to the same karate dojo with me, as well. She had a lot of abuse problems at home back then. I moved away from that town toward the end of my 8th grade year, and I wondered on and off through the years how things had gone for her. Two years ago, I found her on MySpace just doing some searches out of my yearbooks. She's married, has a daughter of her own, and is a paramedic. Seems to be doing pretty well. She and I drop each other a line or two every so often.

I've also made contact with a couple of other friends from that school and some of the other schools I went to (we moved around a lot while I was growing up) through MySpace.

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I used to be on a BBS called GEnie, back before the World Wide Web, and on there, I was involved in a round robin writing project with some people who would later turn out to be well-known names in the sci-fi community: J. Michael Straczynski, and Keith R.A. DeCandido. And now, although we haven't posted in the same thread yet, I don't believe, I'm back on a "BBS" with the latter of those two.