Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 7, 1994 TAG: 9403070123
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHY HAIGHT KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As she watched, a message flashed across the screen from a man who'd been hit by a truck. He was recovering nicely, but his girlfriend left him soon after the accident.
A second message flashed from the injured man's buddy - accusing him of bringing the misery upon himself.
Quick as a keystroke, Lyles rushed to the injured guy's defense. To their astonishment, the two became best friends. Then love blossomed.
Now Lyles, who lives in Apex, N.C., near Raleigh, and Kyle Griffith of Berkeley, Calif., are planning a March ``cyber-wedding'' that will take place entirely via computer - just like their brave new relationship.
Could this be the future of romance? Couples meeting, courting and getting hitched through the magic of modems?
Yes, if you ask the Delphi commercial on-line service, which had more than 100 couples respond to a recent message asking for tales of on-line romance.
Yes, if you ask participants in an on-line Valentine's Day conference, where subscribers to America Online ``chatted'' with Omni magazine founders Bob Guccione and Kathy Keeton about romance in cyberspace.
And yes if you ask Jeff Lipton of the computer magazine Boardwatch, who married a woman he met on-line 14 months ago.
``A big joke among us is that the minute you jump on the board, within six months you'll be attached,'' says Lipton, who's also a staffer at a computer bulletin board in Denver, where Boardwatch is based. ``When you meet someone on a bulletin board, you're not getting the first impressions, you're not getting the expectations that come with meeting someone in a bar. You get a real person.''
That's just what customer service representative Lyles, 55, felt when she met computer programmer Griffith, 51, through a Delphi computer bulletin board last month.
The two wasted little time with the how-are-you, how's-the-weather pleasantries that can dominate face-to-face chats. Instead, Griffith asked about her parents: Where were they born? What are they like?
Lyles felt no pressure to look or act a certain way to impress her new computer friend. Instead she was at ease discussing everything from her Hungarian-born father to her childhood to the fascination she and Griffith shared with the '60s counterculture.
``Maybe it's more difficult to be open in person than it is on-line,'' says Lyles, describing the strange mix of intimacy and anonymity inherent in on-line chats. ``My relationship with Kyle is intellectual, it's spiritual and emotional. It's all the things you'd like to have in a relationship - but I've never met him physically yet.
``You know, I'm 55 and he is 51 and I've been married more than once. It's really a hard thing to explain. I don't think I've ever known anyone in my life as well as I know this guy.''
Griffith has many of the same feelings about Lyles.
``I feel a lot more intensity of relationship toward her'' than in previous romances, says Griffith. ``I don't think this has anything to do with the computer medium. I think it would have happened the same if we'd met in person. I think it's a matter of personality compatibility. She's one of the few people I've ever met where everything falls into place.''
Lyles and Griffith, who are both divorced, talk on the phone at least three times a week and have nightly on-line dates. They sign off each date with computer hugs - made by typing a line of parentheses like outstretched arms: (((()))). And they talk often about the similarities and differences involved in communicating in ``cyberspace'' (via computer) and in the ``dirt-side'' world of day-to-day talking.
They have exchanged pictures - ``He looks like my father did when he was that age,'' she says - and plan to meet in person a few weeks before their March 21 cyber-wedding.
``It won't be a legal marriage,'' Lyles explains, although some couples have had legal marriages - complete with a minister and guests - on-line.
At the Lyles-Griffith event, computer friends will tune in for the exchange of vows, followed by a reception in Delphi's on-line Zodiac Lounge. Lyles sees their symbolic wedding as a serious yet slightly whimsical way to pledge their love while looking ahead to a future that could include real-life marriage - if they hit it off in person.
And have the two thought about the possibility that things won't be as they seemed when they meet face-to-face?
Both say they've heard plenty of stories of deception and disappointment in on-line romances.
Stories about people having cyber-relationships with several unsuspecting partners. Stories about one person using three different names and coming on to the same person using a different persona to match each name.
Lipton of Boardwatch magazine has heard similar stories.
Of the more than 40 million people he estimates are using computer bulletin boards in North America today, he agrees some are less than honest in on-line chats.
``All the care that's taken in meeting someone out of a personal ad should be executed when meeting someone out of a bulletin board,'' he warns.
In fact, some women prefer to sign on using initials instead of their names to avoid getting hit on in the still male-dominated world of cyberspace.
But along with his warning, Lipton offers a personal example of one of the greatest benefits of on-line communication.
When folks chat via computer, barriers of age, race, social and economic status disappear. Until Lipton met his wife-to-be in person, ``I didn't know she was black, and she didn't know I was Cuban.''
As for Lyles and Griffith, they're convinced that their in-person relationship will be every bit as wonderful as it is on-line. And they're equally convinced that communicating with people via computer is the wave of the future.
``This is a whole new world,'' Lyles says. ``It's getting so almost everyone's going to have a computer in their house. Instead of staring at TV sets, you're interacting with a screen and thinking. It's active and it's interesting.''
by CNB