Very simple and clear explanation corroborated with a hadith. Gr8 work!
Scene 1 (on orkut)
Boy: hi, wanna be friends?
Girl: sure
Boy: so where do you live?
Girl: Chicago, how about you?
Boy: London
Girl: wow I’ve always wanted to go to London
Boy: oh really? you should visit then, I could show you around ☺. By the way is that your picture on the display?
Girl: yes it is, and is that you too?
Boy: wow you are pretty, do you have a boyfriend?
Girl (blushing and feeling happy): no I don’t.
(The chat pursues for a while and they end up exchanging chat ids)
Scene 2 (at a party, a guy walks up to a girl)
Boy: hi, are you enjoying the party?
Girl: naah I’m getting bored.
Boy: me too, so what do u do? Work or study or both?
Girl: I just finished my bachelors in -----, looking for a job, how about you?
Boy: I work at ------
Girl: Wow, that’s a great company to work for.
(the talk goes on for an hour and they end up exchanging phone numbers)
The two scenes have the same end, the boy and girl after a few interactions realize how irritating the other person is and they move on to the next person on orkut or another party or club .
My question is, aren’t the 2 situations alike. How different is orkut from a club? Yes you do not have people drinking or dancing on orkut, but every person is out there showing off his/her personal info. People put up their pics or videos for the whole world too see. Every person checking my profile knows how I look like (if I have my pic), what I do for a living, what I do for fun and what movies I like without even interacting with me. Isn’t that like giving away bits and pieces of yourself to everyone out there? Shouldn’t we be sharing those things with friends and people we are close to?
Girls like me, who’ve always believed that dating is wrong, talking to guy unnecessarily is wrong and hanging out in mixed gatherings is wrong do not think that doing the same online is wrong. And it is only because the other person cannot hear us or see us face to face.
Networks like orkut, facebook and hi5 are the biggest fitna these days because they lure people who are anti-dating. They make us feel that its ok to interact with guys as long as they can’t see us or hear us. I agree that watching someone or hearing their voice plays a major role in attraction, but according to me chatting with someone and finding out the other person’s thoughts and beliefs plays a bigger role in instigating attraction.
Here are some reasons why I believe chatting with someone online is worse than meeting someone (and when I mean meeting someone, I mean just meeting without getting intimate):
1) People can put on a different face on chat very easily. (We’ve heard of 60 yr old men pretending to be 20). You cant do that when you meet someone in person.
2) It is easier to lie online than it is in person. A person chatting can write with confidence that he has never dated any woman in past but would feel a little hesitant to lie about it face to face (although there are some people who have mastered the act of lying online and offline)
3) You can never judge a person’s character online. When you meet someone in person, you can assess the person’s character (in some way at least) by the way he/she looks at you, treats the waiter, walks and talks. Again you cannot be completely certain about a person’s character in just one meeting or a couple of meetings but you get a better picture of it.
4) People are more blunt and open online. For example an average decent guy wouldn’t really go up to a girl and talk to her for no reason but would not hesitate to do so online. The other example for this openness can be seen in scene 1 where a guy does not hesitate to comment ‘you are pretty’ the first time he chats with a girl.
The point I’m trying to make here is NOT that it is better to meet someone and date. I am trying to prove (mainly to myself) that chatting online is not as ‘ok’ as we have made it out to be. This blog maybe misunderstood or rather not understood at all by a lot of people who think differently than I, but I am sure there are one or two souls out there who will agree.
I will conclude with a hadith- The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is reported to have stated that “Whenever two strangers of the opposite gender are alone with each other, Satan becomes the third one between them.” (At-Tirmidhi)” I have always thought to myself ‘As long as I’m not physically alone with a guy, I am fine’, but now I realize that this hadith would also apply to being alone with a guy online.
Times have changed; technology has advanced, and unfortunately, so have our values. I feel like I have lost myself in the swarming online world…..I need to find a way back
My question is, aren’t the 2 situations alike. How different is orkut from a club? Yes you do not have people drinking or dancing on orkut, but every person is out there showing off his/her personal info. People put up their pics or videos for the whole world too see. Every person checking my profile knows how I look like (if I have my pic), what I do for a living, what I do for fun and what movies I like without even interacting with me. Isn’t that like giving away bits and pieces of yourself to everyone out there? Shouldn’t we be sharing those things with friends and people we are close to?
Girls like me, who’ve always believed that dating is wrong, talking to guy unnecessarily is wrong and hanging out in mixed gatherings is wrong do not think that doing the same online is wrong. And it is only because the other person cannot hear us or see us face to face.
Networks like orkut, facebook and hi5 are the biggest fitna these days because they lure people who are anti-dating. They make us feel that its ok to interact with guys as long as they can’t see us or hear us. I agree that watching someone or hearing their voice plays a major role in attraction, but according to me chatting with someone and finding out the other person’s thoughts and beliefs plays a bigger role in instigating attraction.
Here are some reasons why I believe chatting with someone online is worse than meeting someone (and when I mean meeting someone, I mean just meeting without getting intimate):
1) People can put on a different face on chat very easily. (We’ve heard of 60 yr old men pretending to be 20). You cant do that when you meet someone in person.
2) It is easier to lie online than it is in person. A person chatting can write with confidence that he has never dated any woman in past but would feel a little hesitant to lie about it face to face (although there are some people who have mastered the act of lying online and offline)
3) You can never judge a person’s character online. When you meet someone in person, you can assess the person’s character (in some way at least) by the way he/she looks at you, treats the waiter, walks and talks. Again you cannot be completely certain about a person’s character in just one meeting or a couple of meetings but you get a better picture of it.
4) People are more blunt and open online. For example an average decent guy wouldn’t really go up to a girl and talk to her for no reason but would not hesitate to do so online. The other example for this openness can be seen in scene 1 where a guy does not hesitate to comment ‘you are pretty’ the first time he chats with a girl.
The point I’m trying to make here is NOT that it is better to meet someone and date. I am trying to prove (mainly to myself) that chatting online is not as ‘ok’ as we have made it out to be. This blog maybe misunderstood or rather not understood at all by a lot of people who think differently than I, but I am sure there are one or two souls out there who will agree.
I will conclude with a hadith- The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is reported to have stated that “Whenever two strangers of the opposite gender are alone with each other, Satan becomes the third one between them.” (At-Tirmidhi)” I have always thought to myself ‘As long as I’m not physically alone with a guy, I am fine’, but now I realize that this hadith would also apply to being alone with a guy online.
Times have changed; technology has advanced, and unfortunately, so have our values. I feel like I have lost myself in the swarming online world…..I need to find a way back
