Yahoo! Internet Life with Lisa Kudrow
"Is There Intelligent Life In Chat Rooms?"
June 1997
YIL: Is it surprising to realize how large a universe online devotes such time and effort to Friends?
LK: It is. The first thing that made me aware that
Friends was becoming popular, before the ratings shot up, was the conversations about our show on the Internet -- an explosion of messages and talk and chat. It was unique to our show then. Friends would be getting a thousand or more messages in an area, and other, higher-rated show would have 438 messages. I realized, God, something is going on. The show was reaching people.

YIL: Was it a coincidence of timing, or is there something inherent about
Friends that would encourage an online audience?
LK: It's the Internet as a vehicle for chatting. Instead of the water cooler at work, there was a chat room on AOL where people gathered. It became a sort of mirror of the show -- a gathering of a bunch of people who hung out because of a common interest. Like the world that the people of
Friends might inhabit, here was a hangout where you could go every night, sort of a neighborhood bar. Like the Cheers bar, or on Friends, when we hang out at a coffee house or go over to Monica's and Rachel's. It's where you know all your friends will be. You study, and when you're done you head there. That's what chat rooms are like.

YIL: Did you enjoy them?
LK: Too much, which is why I stopped. Nothing is wrong in moderation, but I was spending too much time. I got addicted. My husband got put off and jealous. He would come over and say something and I'd say, "You've got to be quiet because I have to concentrate. This stuff is happening fast." So I stopped.

YIL: Because it got in the way of your relationships?
LK: Not so much that, but because I was just too involved. Also, you realize -- or at least I did -- that you really have no idea who these online friends really are. You don't even know their gender. It's a fantasy that you're intimate with them.

YIL: So aside from chats, have you stopped going online?
LK: Yes. There was too much bad stuff floating aroung about me. There's good stuff, too, but if you take it seriously you also have to take seriously the bad stuff. My brain cannot filter out the bad.

YIL: Are you referring to the amateur sites, the discussion groups?
LK: Yes. I read awful, insulting things about me. There are disgusting pictures, too. There is a lot of mean stuff.

YIL: But there's worshipful stuff, too.
LK: Yes, but some of that troubles me too. What use is there indulging in it? Frankly, it gets boring to sit there and read about yourself.

YIL: You say you got addicted to chat. What about it addicted you?
LK: I'm not sure. The ability to talk anonymously with so many people.

YIL: Did you share the obsession with other
Friends cast members?
LK: We all were into it to varying degrees at one point. Now none of us are. We all got burned out and felt our privacy was invaded. People we don't know were e-mailing us. It's too intimate. It's way too intimate.

YIL: But isn't that a choice? You can use pseudonyms and retain your privacy.
LK: Yes, but at one point, someone who knew me convinced me to let on who I was to someone else. Soon it was everywhere.

YIL: You could have chosen a different handle.
LK: Yes, but when you realize that people out there could just as easily be disingenous as real, why bother? It stuns me that there are people who leave their family because they fall in love on the Internet. I don't understand it.

YIL: You can't understand how an intimate conversation could lead to a genuine relationship?
LK: I know it happens, but the problem is that you have no idea who someone is until you become intimately involved. You cannot really know someone from chat and e-mail. I can see how it might be possible to meet someone online and then follow up with a meeting, but I'd use other ways to meet people. It's just rife with problems. Online conversations are fantasies. You are imagining the person, connecting the dots yourself. On the show, in one episode, Chandler falls in love with someone on the Net. It turns out to be Janice, who he had been dating, but was always breaking up with. But in his mind, she was some goddess. People get into trouble when their fantasies bleed into reality. Suddenly you are meeting someone you don't really know.

YIL: Did you ever do that?
LK: No. But I know that people have. There's a lot of clever chatter. There are people who are good writers, with great senses of humor. I responded to that. Then people found out who I was and it became pretty creepy. It felt scary because I didn't know who these people on the other end were.

YIL: Being famous, of course, puts a different slant on that. What about hanging out with others like yourself? Did you and the other cast members ever go online at the same time and make contact?
LK: Yes, sometimes we'd go to a chat room together and instant-message each other. Without knowing that we were there, lurking, people would start talking about what happened last night on the show. We'd go, like, "Oh my God, can you believe they're talking about us?" Sometimes they'd be talking about how disgusted we were. That's where the bad stuff came. For us, it was, "Yikes," and then we'd get out. It was too uncomfortable.

YIL: Did you consider letting people know you were there?
LK: That's another reason I stopped going in. I don't think it was fair. I don't think many of them would have made those comments to our faces. It made me feel bad because they thought they were safe.
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