Twilight Zones and parallel universes in the Virtual Soapbox
The Internet, if you play on it long enough, can play with your mind.
A few years ago, for instance, while aimlessly surfing genealogy sites, I stumbled across a message that my cousin's long-lost half-sister had left on a "Crook" message board. She was looking for my cousin. With first e-mail and then the telephone, I was able to unite them; they met for the first time as adults. (I still don't know my ancestry, however. All I know is that I'm white.)
More recently, I discovered that there's a weblog out there called Soapbox Canyon. Weirdly, its creator also is named Robert and he also writes about politics with a left bent (he is, I must report, kinder and gentler than I am, however). It gets even creepier: I graduated from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor of science in journalism in 1990, and Robert of Soapbox Canyon told me in an e-mail in April that he's working on his master's degree at NAU. (The Soapbox Canyon Robert found out about my blog from the blog Ojo Caliente. I found out about Soapbox Canyon from my referers because the Soapbox Canyon Robert put a link to my blog in his blog.)
Most recently, and most eerily, I discovered, through my referers, that there is another Robert Crook -- who is the webmaster of the right-wing Website conservativeunderground.com. I had discovered, through my referers, that right-wingers were discussing, on conservativeunderground.com and on another right-wing Website, the strange coincidence of the conservative Robert Crook and the liberal Robert Crook.
Within a few days, the Other Robert Crook e-mailed me about the coincidence which I had already discovered. As I told the Other Robert Crook in an e-mail, if he hadn't contacted me I most likely would have contacted him.
While most of the chatter on the two right-wing Websites strikes me as the usual right-wing stuff* to which I wouldn't bother to respond because right-wingers are about as likely to change their viewpoints as I am to change mine, I was glad to see that one of the right-wingers has a sense of humor. In discussing the two Robert Crooks, the right-winger posted this:
This is a still from the episode of the original "Star Trek" television series titled "Mirror, Mirror," in which the crew of the Enterprise find themselves in a parallel universe inhabited by their evil twins. While the right-winger no doubt considers me to be the Evil Robert Crook, again, at least he seems to have a good sense of humor, which is rare among right-wingers.
The Other Robert Crook and I have exchanged a few surprisingly friendly e-mails and we're talking about writing opposing viewpoints on the same topics and posting our opposing viewpoints on our respective forums -- a kind of Internet "Crossfire" with Robert Crook on the right and Robert Crook on the left.
I wonder, though: Don't they say that when something reaches an extreme it becomes its opposite? The Other Robert Crook might turn me into a conservative and I might turn him into a liberal. Like something out of "The Twilight Zone" or "Star Trek."
*For example, one of the regular commentators on conservativeunderground.com uses the tagline "It is better to have a gun and not need it rather than need a gun and not have it" on every post of his. While I support the Second Amendment -- with John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge and the rest of the Bush regime in power, we very well might need guns to protect ourselves from the federal government -- I don't think that I'd want this guy as a neighbor...
12:25:32 AM 
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