I got a late night, S.O.S. call from a friend yesterday. Andy was on the phone to me, in a bit of a state, terrified of the bleeps emitting from the corner of his room and convinced that his computer had become a malicious force out to get him. How had my usually sane friend been reduced to a paranoid wreck?

Actually, I might have played a part. You see, Andy, until very recently, was one of those gay guys who just couldn’t see the point of online socialising and found the idea of putting up a personal profile a bit strange, preferring to meet guys for sex/dating/a pint of lager the old fashioned way. And that’s fair enough.

One of the things about Andy is that he’s very argumentative, not in a harsh way, he just likes to debate – yes, he’s a master debater. So, if I’m with Andy and I have a different opinion about something I better be prepared to defend it. The whole topic of using gay dating sites came up again a few months back. I’ve not used one for a while, for obvious reasons, but found myself staunchly defending them against Andy’s negative picking. Then we got a bit drunk and thought it would be funny to create a fake profile of a hot 18 year old. Well, we’d barely uploaded it and the messages were coming in thick and fast: “got any pics?”, “hey sexy!”, “wanna chat?”; that sort of thing. I think Andy found the whole experiment quite an eye opener.

Andy promised he would delete the profile after I went home, but he later admitted, sheepishly, that he was actually using this fake profile to chat to other men under the guise of a sexy 18 year old! He did delete it after this and created a genuine profile. After that, I saw Andy less and less – staying in and going online became his new going out. I knew it was becoming a problem when he owned up to calling in sick to work one day because all he wanted to do was browse guys online. Then I found out he had more than one profile, different ones for different moods. Andy was becoming an addict.

In fact, Andy came to me for help, realising his internet cruising was crossing into obsessive behaviour. He wasn’t even meeting up with most of the guys he chatted to, let alone having gay sex, it all seemed to be about the thrill of the chase. I suggested that he restrict himself to something like an hour a day. This didn’t work because he’d get chatting, then lose track of time or walk away, but stay logged in, so that the messages would ping into his inbox and he’d be straight back on.

He agreed to go cold turkey last week. I knew he’d find it difficult and I’ve had to text encouraging words every so often, but then last night’s desperate phone call. The relationship between Andy and his computer was getting to surreal levels, like the treacherous computer, HAL, in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He couldn’t answer me why the computer was on at all, as if it now had independent control of itself. He had gone to bed, but the sound of messages pinging into his inbox was calling him. I managed to convince him to pull the plug and go to sleep.

I can appreciate how easy it is to get sucked into gay personals sites and waste hours surfing without noticing it, but my experience is more about getting into a habit rather than a genuine addiction; I was always able to walk away at the end of the day. I do remember the buzz of someone new and hot and the exciting sound announcing the arrival of a new personal message. The faces of those permanent, online fixtures become kind of reassuringly familiar, even though you’d never chat to them as they’re clearly desperate, always logged in… and, of course, with the good comes the bad: “Why hasn’t he replied to my last message? We seemed to be getting on so well. Maybe he didn’t take my ‘best ever film’ appraisal of Kermit: The Swamp Years as ironic”.

So, the paranoia creeps in, as does the disappointment, the rejection, and the disillusionment, to the point were you wonder why you would put yourself through it all in the privacy of your own home. But then again I’ve met some really nice people online – and had the odd decent shag along the way – so it’s all swings and roundabouts. Not for my friend Andy, though. Don’t know what to do about that one. I wish he could take some words of advice from HAL: “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.”