I used to frequent chat rooms.
Initially, I was there because I was curious about this whole internet fad, and talked to random people about movies, music and whatever. Then, pathetically, my roommates would join me in the chat rooms and we would harass people trying to have genuine conversations. When they would jump to other rooms (after inevitably succumbing to our incessant dickery), we would follow them and steal their usernames and say horrible things to whomever they were talking to previously. It was stupid, but holy shit was it amusing.
But then shit got real. I started talking to the same person (I'll roll the dice and say...girl) night after night, and began to think about them when I wasn't online. And then, well, then she did something I'll never forget. She wrote me an actual, tangible, hand-written letter. And...most scintillating of all?
She included her picture.
The arrival of visual aids immediately ended my, uh, relationship. But in the 2009 documentary, talhotblond, shared pictures are crucial to the burgeoning online romance. Falling in love with someone's words may be risky enough, but when you also love the [provided] face that's saying them? Hell, it's even easier to lose your mind . Especially when your just might be totally f--king crazy in the first place.
Currently streaming on Netflix, director Barbara Schroeder's film details the deception and debauchery permeating throughout a doomed online romance. An unintended precursor to the much more effective 2010 documentary film Catfish, tallhotblond also features the unholy (but expected) three-headed monster of jealously, dishonesty and idiocy. But what separates Schroeder's film, sadly, is that in this story, the broken heart doesn't just belong to some blindsided lover, but to a family whose son was methodically murdered by one.
Initially, I was there because I was curious about this whole internet fad, and talked to random people about movies, music and whatever. Then, pathetically, my roommates would join me in the chat rooms and we would harass people trying to have genuine conversations. When they would jump to other rooms (after inevitably succumbing to our incessant dickery), we would follow them and steal their usernames and say horrible things to whomever they were talking to previously. It was stupid, but holy shit was it amusing.
But then shit got real. I started talking to the same person (I'll roll the dice and say...girl) night after night, and began to think about them when I wasn't online. And then, well, then she did something I'll never forget. She wrote me an actual, tangible, hand-written letter. And...most scintillating of all?
She included her picture.
Currently streaming on Netflix, director Barbara Schroeder's film details the deception and debauchery permeating throughout a doomed online romance. An unintended precursor to the much more effective 2010 documentary film Catfish, tallhotblond also features the unholy (but expected) three-headed monster of jealously, dishonesty and idiocy. But what separates Schroeder's film, sadly, is that in this story, the broken heart doesn't just belong to some blindsided lover, but to a family whose son was methodically murdered by one.
