Keep It Real

I went to pay pal today to do some stuff for work and found I had a question. So I went to ask it in the "Ask A Question!" IM box. I thought, "Cool, I will IM my question and a customer service person will IM me back". This happened once before at a different site and the woman IM-ing me back eventually said, "Can you just call?" which I loved.

Anyway, I opened the IM box and got this message:

Sarah - PayPal :

Hello, I’m Sarah and I’m here to answer your questions about PayPal. Even though I’d like to be a real person, I’m not. I’m programmed to answer your questions. How can I help you?

I kind of laughed and then I kind of felt really sad for Sarah. She reveals a lot there doesn't she? "Even though I'd like to get off these antidepressants, I can't". She sounds really bitter right? "I'm programmed to answer your questions, even though I would rather be outside in the sunshine running and laughing and basically existing."

Fellas, can you imagine going on a blind date with Pay Pal Sarah? What a downer.

GUY: Uh, hi...
PPS: Hello, I'm Sarah.
GUY: Oh! Great. Nice to meet you. Wow, you are a lot more pixely in person than in your picture...
PPS: Even though I'd like to be a real person, I'm not.
GUY: Oh. I see. That's rough. Not to be close minded but I kind of only date real people...
PPS: But I'm programmed to answer your questions.
GUY: Yeah, but I'm still feeling a little awkward about this...
PPS: How can I help?

You know what it is? It's that she doesn't say "Hello, I'm Sarah. I'm a program in the computer here to answer your questions." It's the "I'd like to be" that sort of gets me at the core.

Have we all been taking our realness for granted? Maybe I don't appreciate being real as much as I should. Especially since, as I've mentioned before, I'm terrified of robots taking over the world. I was annoyed that Sarah was a computer and not a rel person...does that make me somehow prejudice? Maybe I need to learn robot tolerance so I can co-exist peacefully with people who...don't exist. Maybe co-exist isn't the PC term then?

I don't know, being talked to...especially on such a personal level...by a person with no body kind of made me feel like I was talking to a dead person.

I feel like I should help Sarah, she seems so sad. Should I tell her that being real requires a lot of effort? That there was a good year or two in my life where I also felt "Even though I'm not a real person, I'd like to be"? Should I send her an email and sign it "Keep it Real!" and see if she laughs? Should I set her up on a date with Pinocchio?

Pay Pal Sarah, you are a really sweet and totally helpful. You gave me the exact answer I was looking for in a concise and clear way. You have a...personality, and I bet if you had a face it would be really pretty. Please try to cheer up, being real is a lot more challenging that it looks.

Although, yeah, I guess it beats being a Pay Pal Robot.