Bad breath is tolerable, after all, when one lives all alone. Why one lives alone is another story. What's intolerable is the possibility of missing a chat with JkDriPPer, my friend who lives in Jamaica and whom I have never met.

There could be new junk mail to read or delete, chat buddies waiting to be added to my huge list, new sites to spend time at, new online technology to play with.

My social life, you ask? It doesn't exist anymore. I remember having one a couple of years ago, before I discovered that chat bots were far more exciting. I could have a discussion with Lennon maybe, or a couple of cute virtual women to discuss being and nothingness with.

"Internet surfing or me. You'll have to choose, Lindsay." -- Trikaya. Ex-girlfriend. 1999

I don't quite know when it happened; this constant craving for bandwidth, pining for new modems, staring at hoardings advertising new ISPs. What I do know is that it did, sometime, somewhere, and nothing's been quite the same since.

There's something about the Internet that people don't understand. What they see is email service providers and search engines. What I see is a world far better than the real one. What they see is a million pages in HTML. What I see is a community of people who make me smile and laugh and cry all within a single hour.

I remember the first time. There was a dial tone that went on forever, followed by beeps and the click of modems handshaking. And then, after a nail-biting moment, they came, those pop-up windows, taking over my desktop. That's beautiful, I remember thinking. I still think it is.

"You missed Jethro Tull live because you wanted to watch the Web cast?" -- Sunil. Former buddy. 2000

I have no friends, now. They've stopped visiting. It must be boring for them, after all, to sit watching me type furiously, smiling like a lunatic every time I find a new site that interests me. Partying has given way to chat sessions, and socialising now means checking out a new chat room on a Swedish Web site.

I wake up and log on. Three hours later I stop for a quick sandwich, before getting into full surf mode. The fact that most of my work happens online also helps. Add banking and shopping online to the list, and reasons for my leaving home pretty much fail to exist.

"No partying on Saturday nights? Tu paagal ho gaya kya?" -- Akshay, Neil, Tarun and Karan. Old friends. 2001

So, I'm hooked, well and proper. But I'm not alone.

There are thousands like me, spending hours with their monitors, never calling back, chatting up still others like them, all connected via dusty computers in remote corners. I see a big change on its way. We're not going to be the same as a race much longer. Ideologies are all set to change, from the phallogocentric to the more openly androgynous. Lines between genders will blur, and technology will replace the personal.

I like the idea of dispensing with the socialising process, letting kids grow in an environment devoid of all human interaction, where virtual bots take grammar lessons, and mothers stare at offspring via web cams placed at the foot of cradles.

You think I exaggerate? Wait and watch. We're coming to get you.

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 -- Constant Craving