Media Man Australia - The Online Home of Greg Tingle

The net effect, by Nicole Manktelow - 24th April 2004
(Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald - ICON)

It's usually hailed for changing lives, not destroying them, but that's how Susan describes the internet. She wishes her family had never connected.

Susan* had been married for 38 years - most of them happy - until her husband discovered chat rooms.

"My husband is on the internet non-stop and he found himself one or two girlfriends overseas," Susan says. "It's been going on now for a couple of years.

"He's 74 now and, two years ago, one of the girls was 19. The explanation given to me at the time was that they needed a shoulder to cry on and 'I'm like a father to her', he'd say. But as it turned out, it wasn't just friendship."

The online romances continued. "He even went overseas for six weeks to see one of them ... but then he told me, 'I miss you, I need you back,' so, stupid me, I went after him. He promised then he was all over it."

Unfortunately for Susan, the lure of the chat room soon proved too strong for her husband to resist. "When we were overseas he promised to forget it. We were together overseas for about two months. When we came back, it was only a week or two down the track and it was on again," she says. "Now he's contemplating going back overseas again."

Susan's story is not a happy one, but amid many positive tales of online love the internet has also collected its share of pain and disappointment.

Susan's husband is defensive of his online habits "and he lies a lot", Susan says. "He'll be at the computer from 9 in the morning until late at night. He says, 'So I am addicted, so what about it?'

"It's a very embarrassing situation ... Our son still lives at home. He's 31. I've been trying to hold it together but I am not sure how much longer I can."

Tit for tat

A New Zealand couple were unable to salvage their marriage - and email made a bad situation much worse, explains Patrick*, who describes what happened to his relative. "She's not aware that I know her terrible story," he says.

"She was married to a guy who was contracted to work in the UK for a year. While he was away, she had an affair and decided to tell him all about it when he got back. Unfortunately, she didn't realise her email address was linked to [her husband's] and he was happily reading all her email from London. "He knew all about the affair and had decided to have one of his own," Patrick says.

"Things did not go well for the two of them and they have divorced. Mind you, it's worked out in the end - she met a nice young American on the internet and now they're happily married. I kid you not."

Patrick believes that, at the time of the affair, his relative was emailing both her lover and some friends. "She wouldn't have had a clue as to the risks of email. She's oblivious to stuff like that."

Note from school

A misguided email can also cause considerable damage to careers and reputations - and long after it was first sent, warns Peter*.

Peter sends his children to a Sydney private school and was shocked by an email he received from one of the teachers.

"It was a letter about one of the other children and it was quite critical," Peter says. "It was the sort of thing you should not say, that she didn't think he was supposed to be at that school, that he can't knuckle down, that his morals were bad. It was defamatory."

Peter phoned the school and discovered the email had been intended as a private note for another teacher. The message had been re-broadcast to staff and parents after a virus hit a teacher's home computer.

"What a lot of these stupid viruses do is propagate themselves and go into the in-tray, grab an email and then go through the address book. Our antivirus program had stripped the attachment, so we didn't realise it was a virus at first," says Peter.

The lesson is, never write anything on email you wouldn't want others to see. That message could end up almost anywhere and (unless encrypted) could be read by anyone.

In fact, you can't even trust the intended recipient. A high-profile blunder demonstrated this a few years ago, when a British lawyer sent a raunchy email from work to her boyfriend, also a lawyer, at another firm across town.

Unfortunately, he then decided to show off by forwarding the message to his mates, who sent it to their mates, and so on. The message quickly circled the globe, making headlines and bruising reputations.

Dates from hell

Chances are that anyone who's tried internet dating - even those with success stories - has chalked up a few disasters.

"I was studying last year and when I was online I was a bit bored. I was looking for company," says Sarah*. She'd chatted with one guy via instant messaging and, after meeting as part of a group, decided to catch up at a bar.

"When we were there alone it got really strange," Sarah recalls. "He had drawn me this picture - a Romeo and Juliet kinda picture with romantic prose as well.

"Later in the night he started getting really agitated and eventually he burst into tears.

He had really different expectations. He was telling me, 'I could see myself with someone like you,' and trying to grab at my hand ... Because I had used a dating site, there was an expectation that I was seeking a relationship, whereas all I was looking for was a buddy.

"Another guy would tell me that I should go out and wear something I'd never normally wear - wear it for him and give him a report the next day. That was weird.

"All up, I had given out my email address to five or six people and when I went on Messenger I was getting bombarded by them, asking for my mobile number and when we could speak. One guy really abused me ... I have abandoned that email address."

Overseas and out

An internet romance gave Martin*a chance to broaden his horizons. Friends say he'd spent much of his life at the same address, living in the family home from which he also ran his small business. He'd met his two previous girlfriends at the local shops just a street away.

"When he got on the internet it was like a whole new world opened up to him," says Matt*. "He came into some money and didn't know what to do with it. We were encouraging him to get out and see the world. What happened was that he decided to visit this one woman he had met on the internet. She lived overseas in a really small town and didn't get out much. When he got there, it was like she grew dependant on him and wouldn't let him come back."

Martin did return briefly, but he soon cut ties with friends and went back overseas. He has not been in touch with his friends since.

Liar, liar

The dangers of chat and dating inspired Sydney author Vena McGrath to write a book about her experiences. She's just finishing the final draft of Secrets, Lies & Chat for an American publisher.

"The reason I decided to make my personal life an open book is that I hope to save others from falling into the same traps I did," McGrath says, adding that many of the men she became involved with lied when they said they were single.

There are worse surprises. For example, nothing ruins a date like having the police involved. Randy Cassingham, the American author of the online newsletter This Is True (www.thisistrue.com), has a collection of stories that really are stranger than fiction.

"After LaShawn Pettus-Brown made a date with a woman, she decided to check his background," says Cassingham, recalling one of the US stories on his desk recently.

"She Googled him. The internet search turned up a federal fraud warrant for his arrest," he says.

"Pettus-Brown was a fugitive and had been on the [run] for over a year. The unnamed woman called the FBI and told them where he would be ... he was arrested at the restaurant where he was to meet her."

Laughing gaffe

If someone accidentally sends an email to the wrong people, how they react to the blooper can make all the difference, says Laura*, who participates in an email group for professionals.

"There's a lovely woman in charge of the service," she recalls. "One day in the lead-up to a long weekend, she sends a message, but instead of a list-related message, she sends a request to a beautician for a particular service."

At first there was no response, as though the list had gone quiet. Then another member took decisive action. "One of the other people on the list sent a group email saying, 'Let's all pretend that never happened and we'll never speak of it again.'"

Laura declined to specify the exact nature of the request, other than to say it was "girl business".

Infofile

Internet horror stories outnumber the tales of success at WhoIsHe.com, a US company that provides background checks. To read some - or even submit your own - go to www.whoishe.com/Storys.html

*Not their real names

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