Internet Lovers

When I heard my fourteen year old nephew talking about his new girlfriend, I proceeded to question him; after all he is a member of my family, and I desired, out of sheer filial curiosity, to know who could have peaked this boy's interest so highly that he  felt he needed to talk so confidently about his love life in a car full of people. I asked him who the young lady was, and he gave me the type of response which, in a mind that works like mine, would want to delve further. I like responses which  tell me whether or not there is more to think, and whether or not  that "more" is worth pursuing. His answer caused me to ask him where he had met the girl. He told me, "On the Internet".
 I never quite understand "meeting" anyone on the Internet. I believe that "meeting" someone is actually "meeting" someone the old fashioned way, but I suppose in a world where Internet language is still evolving, there is no word as yet quite appropriate in human discourse for describing the thing that happens when someone is encountered in cyberspace, so the human transports ordinarily practical words like "meet" into use when explaining an Internet encounter with a fellow human, be that human male or female. Until then, I think I must try to wrap my mind around the concept of having "met" someone  whom I have never met.
 I could not believe what my nephew was telling me. He was saying that his new girlfriend whom he loved so much, was  someone he had never met in a real, practical, actually tangible and concrete manner, as we would say: in "real life" (as though there is life that is false) but had "met" on line.
 I had a similar conversation with another young man who talked like my nephew; only, this young person was older, and (I thought) wise and deeply rational. He too had an on line girlfriend. I nearly choked with laughter, as along with a few others I sat at our table at the Marriott eating pizza. He could not understand how it was that I could not grasp the concept of having a girlfriend he had met no where else except on line. He did not know how she walked, smiled, or croaked, yet he was deeply in love.
The strange thing is that  there are also big, hard-backed, adult males and females across the globe who have "girlfriends" and "boyfriends" they have "met" only on line.
People who study these things tell us that modern technology is practically  rewiring our brains. We are becoming a different sort of specie on the planet. The young people, particularly, genuinely feel meaningful emotional bonds with these Internet-mat-beings whose photographs, keyboard and sometimes spoken words they are able to hear bouncing off satellites in space; and I can't blame them. With the free and nearly free use of international, lightening-swift forms of communication between fellow humans all over the world, it is quite possible to feel very close bonds with others we have never "met", and feel sensations of commitment which may cause us to store these emotion in the same manner we store our moneys in our banking and other forms of saving accounts, in the hope that some day, some glorious day, it will prove practically useful. In the mean time I keep hoping that my nephew will keep his heart out of the clouds.