The Deja Vus of Cyberspace

With hundreds of millions of people online, you'd think that you wouldn't be constantly meeting the same people online. Yet, it amazes me just how this happens. Granted if you tend to post or read about specific topics, chances are you'll meet alot of the same people on different sites. But I still find it fascinating.

I started posting on parenting website when I was TTC with Brendan. Eventually I wound up posting in the playgroup for Brendan's age. This group broke off and moved to a new site. At the new site a woman joined who it turns out worked for the Philadelphia district office for my job. There are maybe only 750-1000 employees nationwide. This playgroup had at maxmimum 30 members. What are the odds?

On one of the SMC e-mail lists, a woman posted about thinking about becoming a SMC. She had a somewhat unusual last name, the same as a very good friend of mine. My friend had a cousin with the same first name as this woman and the cousin was about the same age. I never mentioned it to my friend in case it was her and she didn't want anyone to know she was considering being a SMC. And it may not have been her. Several months later, my friend was sharing pictures of a camping trip she'd gone on with this cousin and somehow casually mentioned how it was too bad that the cousin had never found a partner or had a family. I pointed out that she didn't need the partner for the kids, and she said the cousin had considered SMC but had some fertility issues. So, it was her posting on the SMC list.

Not long ago, Renee was contacted by a SMC from a match from the Donor Sibling Registry. She asked me if I knew her so she could have some insight. It turns out that I did know her, quite well I'd thought, although it doesn't look like that was the case. There are many thousands of SMCs out there. Only about 600 are registered for the SMC lists and maybe only 100-200 post regularly and I'd say I've only corresponded offline with maybe 25-30 of them, and she was one of them. Again, what are they odds?

What made me think about alot of these coincidences was recently I realized that a woman I've seen posting on two groups I'm on is actually someone I know from the SMC lists, but she's has a different e-mail and uses a different name for herself and her child. I've seen her post for months and it never occurred to me. But some recent postings made me realize that everything she says from the age of her child, where she lives, her job, etc. exactly match this other woman. She's a bit of a provocative poster and maybe that's why she tried out a new identity, but it begins to make you wonder if there are so many of these coincidences where people are out in the open, what about people like this woman where she' s hiding her identity?

I know logically that anything I put out there can be read by anyone and that there is no expectation of privacy. But it does come as a surprise sometimes to realize that we don't have our personal space out there in cyberspace.