December 04, 2004

• I think it's obvious that online communication allows us to connect with other people of like interests rather than like geography, which has been the mainstay of connectivity for most of human existence. For instance, you now know about me that I'm a bit irked when someone posts such a long Curious George item in its entirety on the front page. If we had met in person, you might never learn this about me.
• Isn't it possible that many people will continue to keep the two types of acquaintances separate? I mean, if you're in the online community to discuss very particular topics, such as your knitting problems or audio ripping techniques, then perhaps many wouldn't see the point of getting together for a nice cuppa? On t'other hand, if your internetsing is directed specifically at meeting friends or partners, you'll seek the etherbuddies out, right? And here's where I say hurray, eh, to online dating services! It's so sensible being able to talk first, meet after. I met a *wonderful* SO last January, and haven't been so happy for ages. (Mind you, I had to kiss a lot of frogs ...)
• I don't know.
• After this week at work, where a really nasty co-worker got another very nice co-worker fired, I would choose to go with the on-line connection. I guess I just feel safer keeping some kind of a barrier between me and my co-workers. Office chit-chat is fine, but that's all it's going to be.
• ...who do you want to meet for coffee when your kid finally manages to burn down his school over the weekend? huh? Jesus, neither.
• I've been wondering about this myself lately. I have a friend (for lack of a better word) with whom I've had an email acquaintance for a couple of decades. We've only met in person at most ten times during those twenty years. (I've made efforts to do so, but he's reluctant and often cancels or has something else to do.) He considers me one of his best friends. Yet from my perspective he's nothing more than a distant friend. On the other hand, my dearest friend is someone I don't see more than one or two times a month, and I never email or IM him. We talk on the phone occasionally, but that's it. I think I may just be a tad peculiar. :-)
• Based on the information given, neither person is obviously a better choice. The fallacy is to think that intimate details make for an intimate relationship. Those of us who grew up pre-Internet have the sense that if you talk about such unmentionable things, the relationship is somehow deeper. But that's clearly wrong. Kids today are used to asking for anonymous help with homework/family/oral sex in online forums. To me, part of a "real" relationship is that the other person is permitted to demand your exclusive, synchronous attention. The examples given -- an ordinary co-worker acquaintance and an extraordinary online yakfest -- are both lacking that important element.
• Not so related, but I was talking with a friend about starting a site where all you would do is go and rate people you know, and possibly tell stories about them. It'd basicaally a twisted inversion of friendster -- the place you go to badmouth your enemies. Truly a sinister idea, and one that I haven't been able to get out of my mind since. Incidentally, I once tried to burn down my school. It was a failure, but they did have to evacuate...
• I remember seeing a saying some years ago on the internet and it went something like this: "In real life you meet people and get to know them. On the internet you get to know people and decide if you would like to meet them." I guess that pretty much sums it up. As for me, I guess it's a kind of mix and match situation, I've got a few 'real world' friends, but then again I've also got a lot of people on the internet who I feel close too, even though I've never talked directly to them on the net. The monkeyfilter community is one I've felt particularly close to since I've been here the past month or two. Not saying "I *love* you guys, but I do like a lot of you here and I think that comes from the ability for all of us to lower our personal barriers to some extent with our online anonymity.
• For whatever reason, I find it difficult to breach the internet barrier. After all, aren't we really constructing avatars here? I've emailed a few Mofites, for example, but did lots of subservient pack member, throat baring stuff just to try not to seem to intrude on their real personas. Or, conversely, kept chatting longer than the situation merited. My internet social skills suck. On the other hand, in day-to-day, face-to-face meetings, connections are much easier. There isn't the lag between post and respost. You can tell right away whether someone got your joke or didn't, and you can quickly elaborate on things that interest both of you. Body language and facial expression have a lot to do with it. Sure, we have avatars of a sort in real life communication, but it's much easier to get beyond, at least for me.
• scartol Sorry about the length. Not enough previewage done.
• I dunno. I value and cherish my real-life friends and family dearly. With them, I've been through all of life's highs and lows. A (very) few co-workers can sometimes become part of one's extended clan but it doesn't happen often, in my experience. Online friendship is different, mediated by the screen and the keyboard, with anonymity as the common factor. Aside from work-related stuff, I've never met anyone with whom a relationship has begun online. That said, the monkeys are some of the most interesting, civilized and clever folk I could ever hope to meet.
• That was the big lure of the web: you didn't need to care about location, schedules, physical appereances, outstanding social skills. You get in contact with people with the same interests and communicate. There was the big hope that this global meeting of minds would change society, would break down barriers and such. Now we see it's not that easy; we carry on our prejudices and mindsets with us. We create like-minded communities, and still turn away those who don't follow our rules. From there, the jump to meatspace is hard. Even if you email extensively, trade JPGs and webcam all day, the threedimensionality of face to face brings a lot of unforeseen factors. I've met a few messageboard (not from here) and email acquaintances in real life. So far, the 3D image didn't clash with the screen image, but still, one can't help but keep net/RL friendships somewhat separate. One, due to geography; the other, due to the 'avatar', which may not be a crafted personality, but simply the image extruded by leaving some details out of the picture. The last scraps of privacy, anonimity, which some value more, or just aren't confortable yet to shed completely. As for those times a more intimate connection is the goal of net interaction, I wouldn't know, never been in that situation. Still, I've seen this happen sucesfully a few times...
• Boilingowls is a pretty cool name - I think I'd have to pick that one over boring, old Celia. Do I win?
• I have to say, personally, I have never physically met up with anyone I met online, although I would like to make one of these LA meetups one of these days. I admit the online dating thing is tempting, but after exchanging dozens of emails that come to nothing, it seems like I could've used that effort to just go to a bar. And to me there is still a stigma attached to it. But I'm sure there is a whole new generation out there who has no such qualms. Being lucky enough to live in LA, there are a lot of places I can go to find like-minded people, physically. But for someone in a small town, I can see the net being a lifeline to the wider world.
• Addendum: I met some people I knew from Commodore BBS's circa 1988, since we all lived in the same place anyway. But not since then.
• Yes. I have to say, my natural reaction would be to leave the damn kid in the forest and be done with it. But for people more sociable, I really wonder how the idea of 'knowing' someone may change.
• That 'yes' was for drivingmenuts. :)
• I've met quite a few people who I first got to know online, though none of them were potential partners. Some were just exactly the same in person as I'd expected, some were very different. It's rare for me to feel close to someone I only know online; there's no nuance, no gestures, no way to see how what you just said/did/saw is reflected in their face so I keep a little distance. There are only a few people I came to consider good friends without first meeting them, and even then it was a kind of conditional friendship until I'd met them. I'm not a very trusting person though, so maybe that's just me.
• I've had mixed experiences meeting people IRL that I've met and gotten to know online. For the most part it's been great, the stuff that I liked about their online selves has been there in person; however, there's been a couple of cases where things just seemed to get weird and uncomfortable and I'm at a loss to explain why. The worst part is when there have been people that I've met online and then in real life who I feel like I would really be able to have as good friends, but the distance factor probably quashes that to a certain degree. Chatting and e-mailing online is ultimately not a substitute for knowing and seeing someone more regularly in real life, at least in terms of forming a lasting, "be there to help you when you need it" kind of friendship. Of course, that said, some of my best friends are people who I got to know in real life who have since moved away and with whom I have occasional online contact. Go figure ;)
• I tend to think of my online acquaintances as facile, shallow friendships, since all I know of them is what is available online in certain forums. For example, I imagine moneyjane as a pleasant person who leads a difficult-to-understand lifestyle (for me, anyway), which would probably pose a large barrier to any real-world friendship. As another example, I think squidranch would probably be a person I could sit down and have a beer with (or a burger, or even a glass of tea) on a semi-regular basis. But all of this is based on information gained solely through contact on this board and linkages thereof. I do not know these people I have mentioned - to a certain extent, they exist as fantasies in my mind. Perhaps moneyjane and squidranch are quite disagreeable in the real world - I cannot know this for certain. Thusly, I do not place to high a weight on online friendships. While I may feel sympathy for their problems (squiddy's recent coffee shop/burger joint escapade comes to mind), it is not the same kind of sympathy I feel toward my housemate/landlord who recently got her SUV totalled by a drunken waitress who lied to the police. It is a passing thing, not a real, living problem that I have to see every day when I pass by the rental car in our driveway. Call it abstract sympathy, perhaps. I guess what it boils down to is that online friendships are, for me, at least, not held to the same standard that real world friendships are. Sad, and disconcerting, but more than likely true. ---- On a side note: ya'll probably know more about some parts of me than most of the people I know in the real world. Which is odd - I guess it's the anonymity of being drivingmenuts, which is obviously not my real name in the world. --- PS: Boilingowls is still a cool pseudonym. -- PPS: Sorry for the long post.
• Did any of that make any kind of sense at all?
• Totally made sense.
• Yes drivingmenuts. Online is weird. Its anonymous, temporary, distant and asynchronous. But its not less valid for all that (in my mind). Meatspace/Cyberspace intersections for me in the past have been odd - so I tend not to mix the two. Besides, Im an obnoxious fuck online for the most part, and a little lamb IRL - so people I want to interact with in each reality are different...
• I'm trying to understand the original post. Someone hypothetically burnt something, and moneyjane has a one of two contacts to choose from to talk about it. One's in meatspace, one's online, and someone will know someone better thru this situation.
• I have to say that I prefer the human contact of a live person, by definition it's real, visceral realtime, interactive. and we train all of our lives to be able to judge/evaluate/accept people based on how they act/look sound. I can't say the same about my 'net skills. and I'm not sure I'm equipped as a human to make complex judgements about people based simply on their writing, and maybe the odd photo. Not that you can't learn about people online, buto nline you have a mask, and a delay to consider your every move. This takes away the spontanaity (sp?) of human nature. Online also gives you a shield, one I am guilty of using. I tend to read more than I write, the net gives me that choice. In person I'm more forward than I am online. I'm not sure why. Online is also venting place, witness all the heated talk about politics and religion, much of it with venom or childish polairity.
• Goofyfoot: I think she was being hypothetical. Klepton: I'm actually less bipolar online than I am in real life. In the real world, I am surrounded by a 30mm shell of cynical deflection. I am well on my way to geezerdom or coothood at the ripe old age of 37.
• Basically it's this; we are getting to 'know' a lot of people online that we do not know in the traditional sense - we've never actually met them being the most obvious example. Is it possible to feel you know someone better that you've never met - because you've been able to share things anonymously you wouldn't share with people you know from, say work, or school, and would that motivate you to meet in real life should you have a crisis they would already know a bit about? In other words, does flesh trump online in every case?
• I often operate in the area between flesh and online. Clients meet 'me' through my website, and email. What they meet in the flesh is the idea of me as presented on my website, but in a 3D form. It's a character with a backstory, amalgmated with whatever iconic expectations the client has regarding my profession. I wonder if people will meet one another as avatars - it becoming socially acceptable to meet real life in online-character drag, so to speak.
• Not for me. I keep in touch with my best friends (RL and online) via electronic means, such as email, SMS and IM. I don't usually bother to put in the effort to write long emails to co-workers or casual friends. Perhaps I am not usual because I take the written word more seriously than the spoken one. I can chat like I'm everyone's oldest buddy to most people, even one I've only just met; my mind goes on autopilot and I just blather. But for me to sit down, and compose an email talking about my personal life, asking after the other person, means the other person means quite a bit to me. A friend of mine told me the quick way to tell who mattered to me more was to see if I gave them presents. In retrospect, I guess that's true.
• Perhaps I am not usual because I take the written word more seriously than the spoken one. That's a very interesting angle - a lot of times there's more 'you' in the written word because it's a lot more work to say what you mean, and mean what you say than when you are just hanging around and talking shit back and forth.
• I understand that it's much more common to meet up with online persons. I still find it kinda creepy, though. I'm not positive why. I think it's because I usually draw big lines in my life. work life | school life | friend life | family life | dating life | online life I usually keep all these pretty seperate, with little bleedover into another. I've made some conscious effort to mix it some, but it hasn't become a normal state for me yet. I think Celia is a pretty name.
• I wish I understood this question better. All of us here are old enough that meatspace acquaintance is the norm. The web is that young, and the web is what most of us know of online acquaintences (unless we had clues to dive into pre-web stuff like BITnet relay or suchlike). There were precursors to the web in the way of written communication, like that offshoot of Throbbing Gristle, what was that called, can't remember. I've met dozens of online acquaintances. Some I've made friends with, some I've slept with. I wouldn't say flesh trumps online, but I haven't met everyone yet. But isn't it a hoot for those who like to write that written communication is the big thang now?
• Yes, that's odd - how we open up to absolute strangers online, and can't express those feeling or fears to people around us. Guess this ties with the 'written word' aspect; you have some time to sort your ideas, polish them, edit, add some googled info before clicking 'post' or 'send', while in RL, your tongue might get tied up, trying to keep up with your mind. I.e, when I struggled thru a traumatic event over a year ago, couldn't really open up with family or close friends; kept getting deeper in depression. Until I explained the whole ordeal to an email friend from (another) board. She replyied as well as she could, and it helped me a lot; felt like a pressure cooker cooling down. At teh same time, if in a jam, I'd likely consider asking for help of advice from an online acquainatnce over a RL friend if I felt the confidence, the openess we share would help clearing the clutter tha a personal relationship may share with me. Problem is, when you're far away from them...
• In this kind of environment (forum) I don't think you can. Chat is a whole different kettle of fish, I think it is possible there. Not sure why, more interaction and less waiting time for responses? Having a better grasp of whether someone finds what you said witty or dumb etc? I know for myself I'm more ... hmm guarded about what I will or will not say here compared to a private conversation. IRL I am very shy and it takes awhile before I will warm up to someone. Here a lot of the 'meat-me' doesn't exist nor matter (no one knows my ethnicity, age, how I dress, what kind of car I drive, whether I live on the wrong side of the tracks or not). I like the levelling factor - not much of the 'meat world' matters I could be sitting here butt naked and everyone is blissfully unaware ... heh I dunno I am very much an 'internal' person I gravitate towards people who think, contemplate and feel. I don't care who you are or where your from (it is not a determining factor in whether I'll talk to you - make sense?). This place is very much that for me. I agree - I prefer written word to spoken words. I like having the chance to think before writing - I have a bad case of foot-in-mouth-itis IRL (less so here). Given the right circumstances I'll open up whether it is here or IRL. Doesn't matter to me. I think it is possible to have relationships that bridge the two worlds. Just depends on what you want to get out of the 'net. and path I know what you mean about the email thing - I've done it myself. Not sure if it is 'ok' to bug them.
• But isn't it a hoot for those who like to write that written communication is the big thang now? I love it when I see friends of mine suddenly buy dictionaries and learn how to spell after getting busted calling someone a facsist online.
• I'd be a bit apprehensive about meeting people who only know me through my internet waffle. I have met people through friends sites when going to a new city, but usually just arranged to go for a pint that week.
• I pick Celia. Bowlingowls sounds like a veiled threat to my genitalia.
• To the hypothetical, I'd choose boilingowls for the cafe du whatthehelldoidowithmykid? Celia works with me and would likely not keep my stuff confidential. That has been my experience -- don't trust folks I work with. Then again, my experience may be skewed b/c I've had issues (drug and alcohol addiction/recovery) that I'd rather not have aired on Water Cooler TV. I also live by "don't shit where you eat" in terms of work, so I don't get too close at work. Boilingowls will also bring more to the table (I believe) about how to help my kid (second shooters don't necessarily scare me off). My friendships over the net are now more important to me than my RL ones. Strange. I also met my partner 7 years ago online, though it was not through an ad. We're the flip-side of the "met the axe murderer online" story. After 18 months of dating LD, I moved here to gawdfersaken Alabama. I met a very close friend on a recovery group in '98 who is now fighting brain cancer. She lives in RI and I began thinking this week about attending her funeral if things don't turn for the better. I would never have dreamed of going to an online "buddy"'s funeral in years past. But she is someone I also get to see a couple of times a year. When I've been in deep doo doo, she's the one I've trusted. Do you have online friends who, if they died, you would attend a funeral or memorial service?
• there's a lot to be said for in-person chemistry. although i do heart you all!
• I am a loner for the most part. I have a few close friend offline and one online friend. My online friend, who lives in Canada, is a friend I talk to about my problems. I talk to her more than my offline friends. It is easier, I am not sure why. My guess is the internet is a buffer, and there is less embarrassment. I don't fear my online friend telling people who know me my problems, fears or f**k-ups. My offline friends, I remain gaurded with. I have been burnt too many times in R/L, by so called friends. Those who are my true friends live so far away and aren't online, it is hard to talk with them about everyday problems. Those who live close are casual friends only. I don't trust them to be intimate with about my life and feelings. I am odd that way.
• It depends. If it's something dark or embarrassing or shameful enough, I might be more inclined to spill it to an online friend than a RL friend. But that's partly because there's a degree of anonymity between us -- those of us who haven't met in person. I'm not talking to a person, in a certain sense, I'm typing words on a screen, words that will be read by no one I have to face out in meatspace (with a couple of exceptions). Add to that the fact that I'm far more comfortable (and eloquent) in type than in person, that I have the ability to reread a comment of mine twenty times before I let it fly, and it's a much safer mode of communication. In a forum such as this, you can't really get to know people very well at all. To really get to know someone online requires lengthy, in-depth, one-on-one communication (like through e-mail). But even that has a limit, because yeah, these are avatars we're constructing, however unconsciously. You could argue that we all do the same in RL, but out there our faces and voices can betray us. They reveal more than we intend sometimes. None of you know what I look like (especially now that the photo thread's fuxx0red) or sound like, whether I'm likely to fart during a funeral or laugh when some poor kid falls down and busts his ass. You've never seen how I treat my wife. Ergo, you can't know me as well as either of us might like. But there are several of you whose acquaintance I would very much like to make.
• Tangentially, I've found that there is a much greater variety of people to be found online than I interact with in real life. It has started disturbing me a lot, actually; one of (not the, but definitely a) driving factors for me trying to find a different job is that I find myself stuck in a monoculture, and I don't like it. I only really noticed when the get-to-know-people threads (kudos to moneyjane actually, who seems to be a big driving force) got going. All of a sudden, the people I know through work seem a bit.....thesaurus time.....uh, shallow, limited, predictable? Limiting, maybe, is a better term. Meeting new people makes me grow, and I've been hanging out with very _similar thinking_ people for too long. And I wouldn't, really, have noticed, at least not as quickly, if it weren't for monkeyfilter. So far as knowing people goes, I don't think about that much. I wear different masks for different situations anyway - and words on a screen, avatars, whatever, are, as I experience them, no different than the play acting I put on in real life.
• I'm a little afraid of meeting online people in real life. I've often toyed with the idea of trying to get an "Austin Meetup" going, but frankly any steps toward concrete action in that direction give me social anxiety attacks of the like I haven't had since junior high. A big part of that is the fact that none of you *know* me at all. Perhaps it's my personal bias or mental hangup or what have you, but the way in which you view me is limited, in this forum, to a handful of comments I've made in response to web-sites other people found interesting, a few too many comments I made because I was feeling silly, and another too many I made because I was pissed off about something. And my perceptions of you are made up of the same narrow pastiche. Although I like the monkeys, and enjoy piecing together the hints and clues as to whom each avatar *really* is, when it comes to a RL meeting I have a sneaking suspicion it would be like walking up to and starting a conversation with a stranger. That being said, it might still be fun to try sometime.
• In essence, what filmgoerjuan said. I have some really close online friends, but the distance factor often ends up trumping the friend factor. I wish I lived near them, that we could get together for a beer, or if they got a flat on the highway I could drive out and rescue them. But they don't, and so it stays in email. I have met quite a few of them in RL and they seemed pretty much the same as I thought they would be, although often oddly shorter or taller than I had imagined. I have very close RL friends too; basically, I guess I don't discriminate and they're very much the same to me. I'd tell Celia AND Boilingowls. I used to be on a private board that spun off from a public forum and on that board we all got to know each other quite well: I think the avatars came down and the real people came out. Some of the people I met there will be friends pretty much for life; yes, I would go to their funerals, weddings, etc. They know everything about me. I will say though that online dating has never worked for me, we can get along like a house on fire in writing and then when we meet there seems to be no physical chemistry and the whole thing gets awkward and strange and awful. But with friends you don't need physical chemistry, I don't care what my friends look like or if they make horrible snorting noises so it doesn't matter where we met or how we communicate. The only thing that matters is that we do.
• Online, particularily at a website like this there's also an element of one-directional conversation. I read much more than I post here, and therefore I feel I know all. However, in reality I know you much more about you, than you know me, which would translate less effectively, than my brain tells me it would, into meatspace.
• mk1gti put it very well (if only by paraphrasing): "In real life you meet people and get to know them. On the internet you get to know people and decide if you would like to meet them." I tend to interact with those people most reliably responding in ways that are meaningful to the topic at hand--whether they are in the ether or physically next to me. So who I chose to interact with very much depends upon what I want to interact about. Of course the advantage of the net is that you can limit contact and simply "not see" the messages or IM pings. People are harder to ignore in person.
• My brother had a wake at his house for a member of his gaming clan, people flew in from all over the world. He talked to some of these people everyday for a few years but disconnected from them after the wake. Maybe it was the circumstances of meeting or that he was used to thinking of them in character, but he said he was disturbed by the whole thing.
• I met my husband on the internets. We were married before we ever lived together. There's a lot more you can learn about someone by writing to them, than by being with them in-person, and vice-versa. We'll be married 5 years this January 1. I attribute our lasting success to the fact that we're both insane.
• One of my favourite people in the world lives in New Jersey and I met her through usenet. So, yeah. But I maintain that I'm even more boring in person than I am on the internets.
• Written words have such enormous import for me that I find it incredibly difficult to be chatty, or really be myself, on the internet. I love to write, and would probably say that, on a good day, I express myself better in writing than in speech. But because writing is lasting, and can be referred back to - goes on my permanent record if you will - then I agonise over every word, spend ages reading and re-reading and chopping and changing, and then the majority of the time delete it before anyone else can have a look at it if I feel it isn't right. With already established real-life friends this is not a problem, because I figure they know me well enough to overlook any sillyness and won't think the worse of me for it - most of my close friends live in other countries so we communicate mainly by IM and email, and that's great. But this effectively stymies my chances of getting to know anyone online, since online buddies have no other knowledge of me to counter whatever rubbish I write down, I'm very wary of showing myself to be less than I actually feel that I am. This is also why I'm not a more active member here - I write a ton of stuff that I then delete on preview because, well, it might not be exactly what I wanted to say, or be said exactly the way I wanted to say it, and thus I don't. Which is a shame, because there are people online, such as you lovely monkeys, that I would very much like to get to know better, but I guess my internet self is just way too shy. I am now going to post without previewing and then go away and worry that I didn't say it right... Fascinating thread, moneyjane, thank you.
• Tracicle brings up an interesting point - I am way more boring and mundane IRL than I am here, as well. On the net, I get to be a philosopher poet (well, OK, a philosopher moron, but work with me, people!) but in real life, I'm just an overweight cynic with a big vocabulary (you know what happens to guys with big vocabularies, don't you?) MJ: If you're online friends are becoming more important than your real life friends, it might be time to get some new real life friends. The thing is, when push comes to shove, there's very little netfriends can do for you. We can't really hug you when you're down; we can't feed you cat for you when you're on vacation. That sort of thing. Which is not to say that online friendships aren't valuable. For some, there is a level of honesty online that can't be easily reached in the real world, because here, you don't see faces unconsciously judging, despite whatever the person may want to feel. But we are all human beings (I think, I could be wrong there) and as humans, we need real, live, flesh and blood contact with others. It's in our instincts, it runs so deep that it might be said to be in our souls. We turn in shadows who play at being human without contact. --- Answer: they get the crap beat out of them in high school, is what. ---- Sorry. Saw a moment to speechify and I had to go for it.
• There were precursors to the web in the way of written communication Yes, they were called letters. That isn't meant to be snarky at all, but many moons ago, these same issues already existed. My friend is writing a thesis on letter writing and community in the 17th and 18th centuries. She studies men* who had friends on either side of the Atlantic Ocean (3 month trip) that they may have never met in person, and yet formed important relationships with. They had very specific ways of relating to each other, forms of address, etc - and extensive letter-based networks - it's all quite fascinating. In her study, they are all men. But, of course, being from California she calls them "dudes". I hope she never reads this, maybe she won't take the teasing well - but she really is brilliant.
• Ah, but middleclasstool, I saved most of the pictures from those old threads. You're just lucky that I have no idea how to make them public. (Heh, heh, heh.)
• Well, this is a tangent, but how many of you have met your online friends? I've met maybe twenty, in various US states and cities, and a few years ago, when I thought I might undertake a cross-country trip in the US, was invited to met dozens more. Maybe that's the welcoming ethos of the community I was part of then (Salon TableTalk, then its diaspora at peoplesforum and worldcrossing and readerville etc.), or maybe it's universal. Online and meatspace criss-cross all the time in my sorta small world.
• path, when I've set up inline images, we might just have to redo the entire thread. Heheh.
• we can't feed you cat What! Bogarting the roast tabby, are you? I see. Heh...actually, I tend to ignore both online and carbon-based friends equally ;)
• I am a very established weird person -- I have thousands of detractors. All the people I ever met online I already knew in meatspace, except for monkeyfilter.
• drivingmenuts- you'll have to trust me, but I had the punchline (heh) in a nanosecond. Vocabulary should come with some sort of warning sticker. Maybe an MSDS.
• This is late, but the thread is interesting. Sorry. I've met a handful of online acquaintances/quasifriends, but that's because we have weird, culty interests that lend themselves to traveling to random cities and spending hundreds of dollars on tacky imported crap in the company of 10,000 other people doing the same thing. Um. That is, the common interest is conducive to meetups. This is an interesting thread. I have little to add - my situation is odd. I write more betterer than I speak, 'n stuff, so what is presented online is representative of what I think, but not of what I am - that is, what is represented in reality. I unintentionally mislead people all the time, and find myself backing off from opportunities to meet people - for instance, a local chapter of a net-based writing group - because I don't want to deal with "but you sounded interesting before" / "I didn't know you were... that" syndrome. Opening up to people is much easier when you aren't looking at them. See also: stereotype of psychiatrist sitting behind patient's head, on the stereotypical couch. It's an avoidant thing, especially when the topic is something that's harder to talk about. That said, the trap is that information isn't the same as a relationship. I've heard tons of personal stuff from people that I don't feel particularly close to. I may sympathize or offer my thoughts on their situation, but I wouldn't call myself a friend because of that. Online communication is interesting and fun for me. It's a playground; I can enjoy my dumb, dorky interests that nobody else I know likes. (You play video games? And you're 27?) And, at times, talk about what bothers me behind the confessional screen. But again, something is off; it's not the whole picture. What's missing? I have no idea. People IRL don't seem to like me, since I have no friends other than somebody from college that I still keep up with via the web and meet every so often for coffee. So hell if I know what's missing. (Also met an ex-SO online. But I don't think it was uniquely online-y. He trawled for chicks because he could; I accepted because nobody else ever asked. Could've happened the same way at a bar.) Hm.