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"  Ahh, Gchat. Light of our life, fire of our loins, waster of our time. Who among us can say they haven&amp;#039;t passed at least three of their daily eight hours in the office by deftly weaving between open chat boxes? (Minimizing every time our boss walks by, of course.) The way AIM used to be the primary tool to talk to our friends in middle school and early high school \u2013 what was your profile quote? Mine was by Oscar Wilde. I was going through a &amp;quot;phase&amp;quot; \u2013 so does Gchat circa 2013. More specifically, it connects all the bored, underemployed twenty-somethings who log on as soon as they finish their first cup of coffee. To that end, Gchat&amp;#039;s also changed dating, or at least the length of time you continue communicating with someone you used to, or someone you want to, or someone you should date. It&amp;#039;s hard enough to decipher members of the opposite sex when you actually hear them speaking, let alone read their words on a screen. (Does he mean &amp;quot;haha&amp;quot; like &amp;quot;haha you&amp;#039;re cute&amp;quot; or like &amp;quot;haha stop talking&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;haha I have a girlfriend&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;haha there&amp;#039;s a Smurf in my cupboard&amp;quot; or what?!) And it can be kind of a life ruiner. Below, find the main three male culprits you&amp;#039;ll find yourself in weird Gchat-related snafus with. 1.That guy you never hooked up with in college. There&amp;#039;s always that one dude. A friend of yours, but not really a good friend. Cute, but not disconcertingly so. Around to give you advice on other guys. Maybe it&amp;#039;s almost happened once or twice, but you were too drunk, or he was too drunk, or his roommate barged in with a pizza right then. Whatever. But since you two never did it, there&amp;#039;s always the potential for doing it. And what better way to engage in some harmless flirting than Gchat? So you start by reminiscing about the days when you used to wear American Apparel and he used to wear fedoras... but soon, the facelessness encourages you both to divulge secrets to each other. GFail Because: You guys will probably fall into that weird category of &amp;quot;we never see each other IRL, but we Gchat every day and you know my sexual routines and we&amp;#039;ve talked about pooping.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s... I mean, it&amp;#039;s weird, not to mention hard to break out of. 2.That guy you went on like two dates with recently who you&amp;#039;re now waiting to ask you out again. So you had a stressful day at work and you just chugged three glasses of wine on a nearly-empty stomach. Now you&amp;#039;re at your computer at home, avoiding that passive-aggressive email from a co-worker, tipsily Gchatting your best friend. And then you notice he&amp;#039;s in your buddy list now! Must be due to those few initial emails you guys sent to each other. (First date plans, a video of goats screaming like humans, other funny Internet ephemera, etc.) You know you&amp;#039;re supposed to wait for him to text you next, but there he is, all green-dotted and available! GFail Because: me: heyyy I had a bad day at work Him: oh hey me: want to come over right now?  ps I love you is on hallmark channel again  its so sad im cryingggg poor gerard butler  sorry im kind of drunk! Haha anyway do u want to have sex  Sent at 9:34 pm  me: omg am I not pretty He has signed off, never to be heard from again. 3.Your Big Ex You know, the one who stuck a fork down your throat, pulled out your heart and ate it. That guy! After a long period of not speaking, perhaps, which made all your mutual friends uncomfortable, this seemed like the easiest (read: least painful) way to get back in touch. Because you&amp;#039;re both mature, right?!  GFail Because: Guess what? It ain&amp;#039;t easy, and neither of you are mature. Woot. This is the guy that you&amp;#039;re going to have eight-hour Gchat conversations with about everything and nothing, which occasionally strays into dangerous emotional territory. Maybe he mentions another girl, or you start discussing your past, or unresolved issues from your breakup.  Whatever it is, it admittedly livens up the workday, and it&amp;#039;s more interesting than making casual conversation with other people on your Gchat buddy list\u2026 but you&amp;#039;re playing with fire, brahs. I&amp;#039;ll put my next paycheck down on a bet that you&amp;#039;ll wind up crying in the office bathroom. :-| So use caution! Or, if you want to be super cool, just be &amp;quot;invisible&amp;quot; online all day. It&amp;#039;ll lend you an air of mystery.  Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Image via istockphoto "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a12617/gchatting-with-boys/>