THE SPECTRUM OF MUSINGS ON THE INTERNET

Civilization.
Photo credit: Markus Spiske
Civilization. This word conjures a lofty air of attainment. It is also synonymous with eccentric pride that has accompanied this exploit. Of course, Man is the formidable force behind civilization. He is the hub of earthly existence. The internet as an invention is also a reinvention because humans, through the span of time, lost contact with the arcane art and science of the internet. This rightful reclaim of the internet by the very bright minds of our modern-day civilization is a heroic act which must be sincerely commended. We have come a long way from ancient roots.
Three decades of interaction on the net.
Three decades of interacting with the net and with other humans on the net, has given me the impetus to write about it. The memory is still green especially about those encounters that have impacted me positively and negatively.
The Name ‘internet’ brings to the fore a potent verb ‘link’. An interaction usually follows the connection of two persons. Virtual meeting, so it is called. There is more to this coined term than you think. To me the internet is a law of consciousness brought to manifestation. Sometimes, my intuition tells me that even spiritual beings could now communicate with human beings. We are blessed because every form of life wants to communicate with us and if possible interact intuitively, spiritually and physically with us.

Musings.
Musings. They form the key strokes on the spectrum of the Internet. I am not talking of light spectrum, the ROYGBIV colours. The Internet like any other human invention has its bane and blessings. Some say it is the invention of the Spirits lurking far in the worlds beyond our comprehension. Other feels it is one of the creative inventions of man. Noble and scariest things do happen on the internet but when the craziest and holiest acts meet virtually, polarity gets dissolved in the solvent of neutrality.
Musings. They remind us of the often popular muses. Whether, they come with a dagger or a rose, they bridle us with a silent laughter and a weird imagination in the long run.
Several years ago, I had several replies from my yahoo account contacts to emails that I never sent. The unknown muse was clever enough to delete all the emails he sent to my contacts from the SENT folder. Unknown to me, he had been delightfully using my yahoo account as his musing Laboratory.
Unsolicited love emails.
At that time, the word ‘hack’ was unpopular. It was painful to hear from my contacts that I have sent them requests for money and love affairs .They also received links in multiple fashion and all those links turned out to be obscene-- a jamboree of porn videos. The question that came to my mind was: “why didn’t this muse sign up his own yahoo accounts?” It wasn’t until I have resolved this issue with the victims that this event became a musing to me. We still need to observe life from the sunny perspective during our darkest hour.

Invitation to porn chat
Musings could amuse any one. As a naïve starter on the net, I was browsing one morning, when a buzzing box rolled in. “wanna chat?” the question came. In a Jiffy, a link popped out from nowhere. “Check me for a cam chat u will never forget”. Ignorantly, I clicked on the link and a window opened. There, was a Nude blonde with legs wide open! “Wanna have sex? Come over sweetie, I am all yours”, she caroused.
I shut down the window immediately; that was my first encounter with pornography and it was in 1999. The early users of the internet know what I am talking about. That night, the musings surfaced. I knew the blonde could be someone’s mother and perhaps she could be having a mama who was still alive. I asked myself if this was the right fruit of civilization. Do I have to be part of this civilization? Was this a common trend in developed nations? Questions, hundreds of them crawled forth like bugs in my suffocating head.

A racist bully on the loose.
Musings. They knock on the door of our hearts when things get hay-wire and when we are least prepared. One other day in the good month of May someone called on my chat room. “ASL”, he wrote. “What is ASL?” I asked. Acronyms could mean just anything. I just don’t get along with them. As a child, I found this ‘YHWH’ so disturbing. I got to know later it was a short form for YAHWEH.
“Age, Sex, Location”, my caller explained. This was kindest thing he ever did. When I communicated my details to him, he asked me further about my race and I sincerely told him the truth even though I barely knew him. My response made heaven broke loose.
“I hate blacks so much” he wrote in bold upper case Bodoni MT black. Then he followed with senseless insults and threats. For a span of 10 minutes, he belched every kind of negativity on me. I observed the chat board in mute consternation. This man hardly knew me and here I was a victim of cyber bulling and virtual racism. “It’s not too bad to hate, it’s your right but you don’t need to hurt me” I told him. I could feel his spate of anger from that distance.

A time travel into the past
That night, before I slept, the musings surfaced. I imagined myself in the Era of slavery. Chains. Brutality. Separation. Tortures. Death. I shook like a volcano in tears and I didn’t know I was crying until I started feeling the dampness on my shirt. I had the first glimpse of how racism operates with impunity.
A relocation plan gone sour.
The following morning I had to reclaim my self-esteem: ‘’There is nothing I could do about my blackness” This had profound impact on me as a young man. Coincidentally at the time, I was working on securing a professional license in the same country which my caller lived but I backed out. Some years later, I also had very ugly experiences in two embassies. In the first embassy was a scenario where a Visa officer made ugly racial remarks regarding my nationality.

In the second embassy, I saw how the visa applicants were maltreated — we were asked to stand in the hot sun even when they could afford shed for us. If this was the treatment I got in my country, I was not sure about the welcome I would have in those countries. Each day when I reflected on the unity of humanity, I take a look at the world map and I find out that the barriers or borders on earth are synthetically placed there by man in a world which is not ours; a realm which we would have to leave someday.

Progressive surfing stamina and dating preferences.
As time went on, I gained experience surfing on net. I took time to visit dating sites, view profiles and even got registered where this was the minimum requirement to view profiles.
There were so many profiles, preferences and desires. However, I noted the strange preferences for white skins by certain group of people.
They wrote unremorsefully with such a strong dislike for darker skins. It reminded me racism still has a grasp on man. This kind of orientation is incompatible with truth as enshrined in the nature of soul in spite of the scientific explanation that implicates melanin in the formation of the different shades of brown skin. It will take hundreds of years to erase racism from the heart of man. Humanity shall get there someday, a time where the colour of one’s skin would not be the basis for our action or inaction.
It got amusing and darker about the internet.
Musings. They make us assess how sane humanity is. In the early 2000s, a friend of mine went nuts with excitement. Hold your breath! He made a new catch, a babe on the net! This Belle, as was portrayed by the photos she emailed to him called herself, Jennifer. She was a rich, single and available-for-marriage Caucasian from Vermont.
During their initial chat, Jennifer asked my friend if he was a ‘good Christian’. ‘Good’ was in deed the right adjective; it’s a pointer to the fact that if there is a good Christian, there is also a bad one close to our door step. Jennifer knew that my country folks were piously religious even though it does not show in their conducts.
Holy and terrible
As a young man after the death of my Father, I was a victim of a scam orchestrated by a born-again Christian who used our healthcare facility and equipment for 5 years and never paid a penny for the rent. Each time, I reminded him about the unpaid rent and service fees, he would swear in Jesus name and then gave me a small fee to transport myself back to school.
Armed with the written agreement we had drafted five years ago, I decided to invite the law enforcement within the vicinity to look into the matter. To my surprise, the police men told me that the small token given to me as transport fare the few times i visited the defaulter suffice for service and rent cost. The born-again Christian smiled mockingly at me. It was clear he had bribed the law enforcement agents. It was a very bitter experience for me.
Back internet love.
Musings. There are everywhere like microbes in the air. Let us return to Jennifer.
My friend told Jennifer that he was a good Christian and she went ahead to inform him that their conversation should be confidential. A secret romantic relation was established for several weeks.
My friend had her photos in his phone. I often heard him receiving calls from his new girl. One day, my friend came in with a framed photo which he placed on his TV stand. The Caucasian figure in that photo triggered my curiosity. The air around her portrait conjured the celestial image of a celebrity.
The succulent lure and the point of no return.
‘That’s Jennifer Williams’ he pointed to the photo and added ‘from the USA’. At that time and even at the present time, the ‘American Dream’ has always been a popular theme. Most persons believe that once anyone goes to the USA, he instantaneously become rich. I got myself believing in the myth of diamonds scattered all over the streets in the USA.
And here, was an American celebrity offering her love and resources to start a fast food business in four of our megacities. My friend, and Jennifer's potential husband would be the chief managing director of her business.
My friend could not resist the offer; he was head-over-heel in love with Jennifer Williams and even when I tried to caution him, he was adamant. It’s often normal for two mutual friends to feel petty jealousy especially when they do almost everything together, perhaps my friend felt I was harboring one and that was when he told me that his conversations with Jennifer were meant to be confidential.
A sincere request.
There was a day he asked me to speak with Jennifer on the phone. The voice was a caricature of a feminine Caucasian trying hard to maintain the American ascent and I guess the person was using a voice modification app. I was not convinced at all but in spite of this, I felt my friend could be right and I wouldn’t want to be a stumbling block to his potential success.
Jennifer told my friend she was an investor and a beneficiary of a legacy left over by her late dad. She made my friend believe she had over Eight hundred million dollars and she made it crystal clear that money was not her problem. When I heard this, I was skeptical but did not show it. Jennifer also promised him a green card after their wedding. It was like a fairy tale to me.
Gone for a business tour for a business that would never be.
My friend needed to do a feasibility study in the four major Cities that would anchor Jennifer’s business and requested that I joined him to tour these cities in order to get strategic locations for the fast-food business. We met real-estate managers, bakers, chefs, architects, designers and other professionals related to fast food business.
We studied famous fast food businesses to have an edge over our competitors. I must confess, there were very few ardent endeavours that I had undertaken when compared to the journey that I made with my friend. Fast forward, the D-day finally came. Jennifer had sent my friend about 2million dollars through DHL. However, the money never reached him.
In the manner of Robin Hood
A strange voice sipped through his Nokia phone. “I am David Woles from DHL office. Your package was seized by the customs and we need to negotiate with them for a settlement out of court. You would be charged for money laundering if no action is taken''.
Few minutes later, Jennifer called and asked my friend to use his funds to settle the custom officials. She promised to reimburse all his expenses. My friend didn’t sense anything wrong. He was an enchanted Ram dancing to the music of his enchantress. Soon, he was sourcing for fund to send to David Woles. I was not spared. I had to loan him some part of the money which he was unable to repay till 2012.
It was my utmost interest to see the end of Jennifer’s saga. After remittance of the said money, David Woles continued to cook one story after another. When he saw that my friend’s resources were depleted, his mobile phone died. We could neither reach him nor Jennifer anymore. Both have disappeared into the thin air. No dollars. No Jennifer. No fast food centres. It was a scam.
Safe shores.
Musings. They come in glorious fashion and leave us drained. Jennifer’s tale is not a fiction, it was a real event; an ordeal that nobody would like pass through. There were cases of people who could not cope with the frustration of being duped and they committed suicides. It was neither a sad nor happy ending for my friend. Though he lost all his savings but he is still alive and struggling all over again.
Blind GSM dating.
When I mentioned the musings on the Internet, the GSM technology is included. A colleague of mine met a girl on SMS chat which used to be in vogue in the 2000s. It were the times of black and white phones. we didn’t see smart coloured phones coming. She had the sweet voice of a chirping Robin bird, sounded sensible and appeared speculatively adorable. Video contacts were rare and it was audio chemistry formed the basis of their love. They spoke romantically each night.
Musings. When they bring reality to us, only those who expected the worst goes unscathed. She arrived that evening full of confidence and hopes. I was asleep when my mobile phone signaled the arrival of a text message. “Hi. The ugly thing is here” texted my friend who belongs to the group of men that assess a Lady’s beauty only from the physical. Such a texted message would no doubt be a harbinger of bad news.
“It’s nice to hear that. Please try to manage her well. She needs your love”, I replied him. Poor Gal, how I wish she would improve herself esteem after her encounter, by working on this axiom: “Beauty is only skin deep”. The duration of her visit was reduced to a day as against the former plan to spend a week. The next morning, she was shown the way out. Hard it is for some when it comes to blind love.
Musings: Coincidences belong to the obsolete mandamus. We attract our likes fifty percent of the time. We also attract our complements fifty percent as well; 50–50, no qualms. Check and balance tends to sort itself out here. The wheel of 84 has not stopped its eternal spin. We are learning every day through our own experiences.

Conclusion
Musing; the word is a strange hybrid that plays a trick on our minds. The internet is a good place to learn and has space for good thing to happen. The internet with all her accessories: social media, blogging, video calls and many others, brings out polarized experiences for her myriad users.
My experiences on the net are vast and this piece cannot accommodate all of them. I did not have it all bad on the net in that I had several real and nice friends from the internet. I want to say hello to Susannah Johnson, Layi Adams , Sarah Takagi, Danielle Price, Iromee Gales and all my friends from the early days of the internet. Musing. I love this word because it has enhanced my internet life and I must confess that i have never had it so good in the present digital dispensation. Good morning

Note
I featured this piece on medium and it could also be accessed there via https://medium.com/@mikhailikpoma/the-spectrum-of-musings-on-the-internet-527269ad1839