The Moira (Mili) & Ross Story
(Ross used to use a cyan name and Moira was pink, so Ross decided to mix his name with pink like this, to show they were a couple)
Since May 2007
Moira is a chatroom character. Nobody knows who she really is or how old she is, or even if she is really a female. She had lied about her age among other things, she is careful never to show a picture of her face, and never uses a webcam. She/he could be anybody who has decided to create an “online personality” However her/his effect on unassuming, genuine people can be significant. I chose her because she is a classic example.
She is a typical sample of others who have created a “virtual personality” for themselves. A common statement for these characters is that people they chat with online are not “real friends” but “virtual friends” or “e-friends” which somehow makes them unreal and thus they are fair game to be treated as less than equal human beings…
This case illustrates how an individual such as Moira can deeply affect the lives of well-meaning individuals, causing them pain and anguish, and causing them spend most of their time typing to people in chatrooms…
Ross in great pain on October 13, 2008
Another interesting aspect to this story is that I was involved in it too and it shows that you should always be cautious when entering unknown territory.
A couple of short conversations I caught!
(Camilla the chicken was one of the nicknames Moira used)
August 6th, 2009
P…: so u & ross are back together once again
Moira: we come and go all the time
August 19th, 2009
Unnamed 1: ross is messed up from all those drugs
Unnamed 1: as for moira id like to strangle that witch
Unnamed 2: yeah he is
Unnamed 2: and he fights with jerry all the time i hate him so much
Unnamed 3: camilla the chicken ??
Unnamed 2: that moira is messed him up
Unnamed 2: moira the fool
Unnamed 1: what he sees in her ill never no
The first person I met on ares was a girl called Moira. She was extremely cheerful and friendly. She invited me to come back to a chatroom, saying “come back anytime, we are always here”. I returned, and fell into something I never would have expected. My experience was so strange and unusual that I thought it should not remain private. What makes the story significant is that I made a mistake of introducing someone “Ross” to Moira and she has managed to take over his life completely. He lives with her online (and often without her) for 3 years now… To Moira’s credit she often states that for her it’s just fantasy… “Fantasy Island” as she referred to it… However she also hints to her virtual e-boyfriends that she truely loves them and might even meet them one day. She knows it’s wrong to give people false hopes and feels guilty about it, but the thrill of living an online fantasy life and feel that it’s real is too great. The men she deals with won’t respond too well if they were sure it was all just fantasy…
What was even more astounding is that this wasn’t an isolated case… After some time I found out that this type of game is common between men and women online. It seems to be more common among women but men do this too. However usually it doesn’t last this long as in this case…
This type of online distance relationship can cause a lot of confusion, jealousy, anguish and hatred. When people are together in real life, they are physically there. They can sense expression, body language, know where each one is at any time… But online none of this exists. The other person is mostly text that comes to you when they feel like writing… It’s almost like make believe… For example, ross thought all was going well between him and moira. They even talked voice on skype daily. One day she said she will be back tommorrow but she dissapeared for days. Then he found she changed her nickname to Nicole and was going into various chatrooms making new friends. Here is some text where he cries about it in one of the rooms she started to hang out in…Ross expresses a lot of anguish in a room after Moira dissappears on him and shows up as “Nicole” in various rooms10/13/2008. Also if the other person doesn’t seem to make much sense or they are unresponsive to your concerns, it can be quite horrifying, painful and confusing. In fact at some points Ross was so astounded with the way Moira talked to him that he wanted me to review his conversations with her. Here are actual texts he sent me to analyze. I did my best to comment in blue but all I managed to do was basically summarize the response as it’s quite impossible to know why a person would respond in this way: Moira appears very cruel and uncaring towards Ross: 01/11/2008and here’s a second conversation where she doesn’t seem to make much sense 01/13/2008. As can be seen, Ross is being very genuine and shows a lot of emotion and pain, but Moira doesn’t seem to care at all. She appears to be psychopathic. Ross keeps talking hoping to get through to her but it hardly helps. For an 18 year old as she claimed to be she sounds quite cruel. But what if she’s a lot younger, very immature, clinically depressed or has some other psychological problem?
