“Dave. Stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave … my mind is going. I can feel it … I can feel it…” (from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey, not a chat room).

My friend Josh is in love. He sits in front of his computer all night waiting for her to log on, and he sneaks back to his house throughout the day in case she comes home during lunch.

His computer is set to make a loud knocking sound the minute she enters her password and, to see his face light up, it’s as if she has just walked into the room.

We can’t reach him by phone because he’s always connected to the Internet and can’t afford a second line. Contrary to his nerd persona, Josh always has something romantic going on. Lately, it’s Andrea667.

He’s quoting Shakespeare and putting the words in lavender italics for special effect. But I can’t help remembering what happened last time…

Sarah was a divorced, single mom and 10 years younger than him. They actually discussed birth control before they had cyber sex, saying that they were going to do it right. Their cyber affair was incredibly “hot,” and Josh said he had never felt so close to anyone.

Before long, they had pledged their love and were looking for new jobs and an apartment together. They told all their friends.

Josh asked Sarah to marry him and she said yes (they still hadn’t met). By then, cyber ecstasy was not enough, and all they could talk about was getting a motel room.

When they finally faced one another, Josh looked at Sarah and was more in love than ever. “Get me to the church on time,” he said. Sarah looked at Josh and blanched. The wedding was off, and virtual sex was out of the question.

She had seen pictures of him, knew he wasn’t Leonardo di Caprio, and knew what he did for a living. It just wouldn’t work, she explained, and he wept for a week.

But now there’s Andrea. Relationships may be limited on the Internet, but is this enough for the real human beings who are sitting in front of their home computers? They say that the Internet is the hot spot for lonely hearts, and I can’t help but wonder what this says about love.

It’s ironic that computers were supposed to bring the world closer by allowing us to connect with each other.

Who could have anticipated the strange twists humanity would add to the formula? We have people pretending to be their opposite sex, kids pretending to be adults, liars and cheaters who are fooling, using and abusing others for fun and profit. Not that this doesn’t happen in real world relationships.

Both can be superficial, but at least you have visual and other sensory clues that your “lover” is not all there.

We can ensure more valid relationships, however, by defying the superficiality. We can be real, even when it hurts.

Imagine you’re online with your cyber-lover. You’re whispering sweet nothings when you are suddenly overcome with a gastric response to that burrito you ate for lunch.

Do you tell your cyber-sweetheart that you just committed a social faux pas and beg forgiveness? “Pardon me! I just farted!” in bold brown capital letters.

Most of us would just let it pass. No one is the wiser, right? Unless you are the kind of person who always blames it on the dog anyway, you aren’t being honest about who you are.

What would you do if you were in person?

No matter how long we “know” a person in this cyber-dating kind of way — a week, a month, even a year — we still have secrets, those little things people withhold from each other, especially those things we most dislike about ourselves.

My friend Josh always assumes that just because a woman likes talking to him, she’ll like everything about him, but it never happens that way. Poor guy doesn’t get it.

There are a lot of people out there on the Net looking for love. It’s a sad statement on the world we live in when people must go to their computers to find someone to love. And it’s scary how many people say they are finding it there. Dave? Are you there, Dave?

The plus side to online relationships is that you can end a relationship with a single keystroke.

No tearful goodbyes, no guilty apologies, no lies to cover up your truly selfish reasons for moving on, no stalkers, no angst.

Just zap ’em once, and it’s over. And when you’re ready for more, there are at least a million more suckers out there waiting to hear from you.

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Kata Alvidrez is a graduate student in English from Los Angeles, Calif.