Requesting the Consensus
I have a question to pose to all of you. But it needs a setup. Hence, I begin the setup. :P
I started messing around on the net back in 1994. It was my sophomore year of high school, and my school benefitted from having a principal who was a tad overzealous when it came to technology. So he was able to get tons of technology grants for our school, and within a short span of time, our school was one of the most wired in the country. And since I've always had a knack for technology, I was an instant sucker for it. We'd experimented with it for a short while with one computer in the library, whose $10/hour or so of bandwidth only got regularly used by my friend Jim, who messed around on MUDs on the school's bill. But when it arrived in earnest in our computer lab, it was with NCSA Mosaic, the first web browser. And the web in its infancy was quite the frontier. It's hard to imagine the web now without professional layouts, streaming video and banner ads, but back then, it was just pure experimentation. And one day, dinking around Netscape's web directory (which eventually became Yahoo - how oldschool is that?) I stumbled upon a web-based chat program called Talker (which, holy crap, still exists in nearly its original form!!!)
Now, Talker was pretty rudimentary and simple to use back in the days before Java and identity theft. You picked a name, then selected a room and chatted away. I was disturbingly hooked to this thing. I took advantage of being in the Talented and Gifted program to spend at least an hour on there every day. I spread word to my friends, and we all did our time on Talker. And in my time there, I befriended a girl named Taryn. Taryn was a girl from Winnipeg who logged on at home. She and I chatted all the time, eventually developing a close friendship, through both e-mail and snail mail, that lasted 3 or 4 years. I even remember e-mailing her a recap of the first school dance I ever went to (probably the first of my many rambling tales which you all are probably used to.) Often, we chatted about me flying up to Winnipeg some time and hanging out. But, as time passed and I went to college, the e-mails and letters died out to nothingness.
So, while checking up on some of my old friends' online presences, I decided to give Taryn's name a good ol' Googling. And, while not surprised by old artifacts (the kind of guestbook notes we've all left in the distant past,) I stumbled upon a post she made recently at a message board. I'd finally tracked her down and was hoping to get in touch. But seems the only way I can get a hold of her is to sign up for said message board, which I'd never go to on my own.
So the question is: is it unethical/creepy for me to sign up for this board and send her a message? And if so, does anyone have any other suggestions? Help me out here, folks. :)
I started messing around on the net back in 1994. It was my sophomore year of high school, and my school benefitted from having a principal who was a tad overzealous when it came to technology. So he was able to get tons of technology grants for our school, and within a short span of time, our school was one of the most wired in the country. And since I've always had a knack for technology, I was an instant sucker for it. We'd experimented with it for a short while with one computer in the library, whose $10/hour or so of bandwidth only got regularly used by my friend Jim, who messed around on MUDs on the school's bill. But when it arrived in earnest in our computer lab, it was with NCSA Mosaic, the first web browser. And the web in its infancy was quite the frontier. It's hard to imagine the web now without professional layouts, streaming video and banner ads, but back then, it was just pure experimentation. And one day, dinking around Netscape's web directory (which eventually became Yahoo - how oldschool is that?) I stumbled upon a web-based chat program called Talker (which, holy crap, still exists in nearly its original form!!!)
Now, Talker was pretty rudimentary and simple to use back in the days before Java and identity theft. You picked a name, then selected a room and chatted away. I was disturbingly hooked to this thing. I took advantage of being in the Talented and Gifted program to spend at least an hour on there every day. I spread word to my friends, and we all did our time on Talker. And in my time there, I befriended a girl named Taryn. Taryn was a girl from Winnipeg who logged on at home. She and I chatted all the time, eventually developing a close friendship, through both e-mail and snail mail, that lasted 3 or 4 years. I even remember e-mailing her a recap of the first school dance I ever went to (probably the first of my many rambling tales which you all are probably used to.) Often, we chatted about me flying up to Winnipeg some time and hanging out. But, as time passed and I went to college, the e-mails and letters died out to nothingness.
So, while checking up on some of my old friends' online presences, I decided to give Taryn's name a good ol' Googling. And, while not surprised by old artifacts (the kind of guestbook notes we've all left in the distant past,) I stumbled upon a post she made recently at a message board. I'd finally tracked her down and was hoping to get in touch. But seems the only way I can get a hold of her is to sign up for said message board, which I'd never go to on my own.
So the question is: is it unethical/creepy for me to sign up for this board and send her a message? And if so, does anyone have any other suggestions? Help me out here, folks. :)