At Northwestern, this was a blessing and a curse. We had our e-mail gimmicks, and I remember some college friends specifically by them. It soon became clear that there was, at least in this case, when I made a move on her and got stuffed. E-mail's silence was as big a draw as its expressiveness. It promised refuge from chaotic noise, in an era in which car-alarm makers always keep one step beyond the threshold of what I can tune out.
Noise equals party, and party equals chicks, and chicks equal clouds of loud, drunk guys.
During the sonic assault of a party, I would get too sick of it all to open my mouth, so inevitably, I would escape to log onto e-mail, where I traded the raucous stimuli on the other side of the closed door for the chance to be heard, maybe not then and there, but sometime, and somewhere cleaner and sharper. I began to notice that the Internet drew people who lacked the patience to listen. I darted to my computer and entered an America Online chat room, where twenty-three people fixed one eye on the computer screen and the other on the television. Twenty-three rubberneckers were casting their thoughts into a sea. Only rarely did anyone respond to anyone else, and when someone did, it was with braggadocio or bluster.