The internet and social life

[Bella Fortuna]

Others have already said it so well.... but it's changed... well, everything for me - socially, romantically, how I spend my time, what I want to do in the future, the things I think about and have learned. Who knew, a few years ago when I decided to join that first forum, the amazing road it would start me down...

[devogue]

I think that's pretty much your loss, Dev. You've admitted that your thoughts about two people have changed. What about the rest of us? It only takes a moment to realise that the same would happen with (many) other people too, yet you seem prepared to dismiss them as perhaps "unreal", as merely "part of the Internet", when you have already experienced "the other side". It's not a game to some of us, and when some bastard comes along to deliberately hurt and then analyse the result, then it makes me bristle. Er, not you! Necessarily.

I've thought about things a lot before and since I met Charlou and Seraph in Australia. The first thing to say is that it would be much, much easier for me to meet people in the UK and Ireland, but I don't - as I said to Charlou and Seraph, the great geographical distance between us made me feel more comfortable about meeting them - it was probably a once in a lifetime thing, a memory to be cherished and a slice of life that we can share and recount here. They are wonderful people, it was a great experience and I don't regret meeting them for a second - but if they lived an hour from me in Europe I wouldn't have met up with them.

I want to keep my online life completely separate from my real life, and there are a number of reasons why. I take just fifteen days holiday a year (no bank holidays, work over the holiday periods) - this year ten of them were used on the trip of a lifetime to Australia - I really couldn't miss it - so now I have just five days to spend with my wife and kids. That's this year. Next year I'll have a full fifteen days again - I haven't seen my friends in London for seven years, I haven't seen friends in County Down for two years, I haven't seen my sister in Liverpool for two years, I hardly see my extended family and I will, of course, want to spend plenty of time with my wife and children. Even if I had another couple of weeks off there still wouldn't be time to meet up with you lovely people - I don't mean to be horrible, but people here are way, way down my list of priorities when it comes to how I spend my RL time. Charlou and Seraph were at the top because everything came together - geography, time, company...

The second reason I am wary about meeting up with people is that this forum allows me something that is pretty unique - I can give expression to elements of my personality that I can't share in Real Life. As such, I interact with people in a certain way here - I am not "SB" (my initials) - I am "devogue" here, and I use my persona like an avatar in Second Life or something. Everything becomes exaggerated, more colourful, more "game-like". I don't want the mundane reality of Real Life to seep in to my online relationships with people - I don't want a crowd of people to see me sipping a pint, picking up on my characteristics and facial expressions and then transferring them to my posts. No - I don't want you to know the "real" me and I don't want to know the "real" you. I don't want to sit in a bar in Blackpool and see the "Tiggerness" stripped away from Tigger, the "Lozzerness" stripped away from Lozzer - I want to experience you all swimming free in a pure pro-silver sea of Tron-like electonic beauty.

The third reason relates to what you said about "hurt" and the nature of community. This is an internet forum first and foremost - anything extra that has developed beyond that has developed because of the selfish desires, wants and needs of those who populate it. If you decide to meet up with twenty people who post on the internet forum, if you fall in love with them or whatever, you have opened Pandora's box and you have moved your involvement beyond the basic reason for being here - you cannot and should not then expect members of the community who use the forum as it really is, as an internet forum full of avatars, sigs, and the rough and tumble of internetica, to feel the same hurt and emotions that you feel because you have met other people in real life. The onus is on you to fit back in with the unique electronic vibe of the internet forum, not on other members to accomodate your new found extra-forum relationships.

When I met with Charlou and Seraph for what amounted to just a few hours, it was like the greatest PM exchange ever. God, did we have fun talking about you lot! As we spoke, we created little bonds, little impressions; when seeing someone's facial expressions things did make more sense - (perhaps I was wrong about that person?) - we had the ultimate private forum. So I then return to the forum and I see someone having a go at Charlou - how do I feel? Well, I'll tell you - I feel much, much more upset than I did before I met her, and I have had to bite my lip on a number of occasions because I recognise that feeling and I'm tempted to intervene. All of a sudden, she isn't an avatar - she's flesh and blood, but the person having a go at her is an avatar, so now my whole interaction is skewed and warped and I'm not enjoying a "pure" internet forum experience - which is what I signed up for in the first place!

[Bella Fortuna]

From my own personal desires and motivations I disagree with much of what you wrote, Dev, but you have expressed your vantage point clearly.

[Rum]

If you added the hours you spend here to your annual leave you could have a month off a year.

As I said earlier in this thread - there are no rules to this. As I also said, meeting a bunch of people from herein RL makes the experience richer. They don't come across totally as the same persona exactly, though close enough, but none of them really go to the same lengths as you do to 'play' a character, i.e. 'Dev' - and maybe that's the difference. This forum and their presence in it is simply nearer RL to those who are happy to take the step into real life meetings.

[devogue]

From my own personal desires and motivations I disagree with much of what you wrote, Dev, but you have expressed your vantage point clearly.

Fundamentally, that's what it's all about, Bella.

I should stress that when I used the word "selfish", we are all selfish - desires are by their very nature selfish.

Also, not desiring real life interaction with members does not mean one cannot have fun and a good time with them online.

[Bella Fortuna]

If you added the hours you spend here to your annual leave you could have a month off a year.

As I said earlier in this thread - there are no rules to this. As I also said, meeting a bunch of people from herein RL makes the experience richer. They don't come across totally as the same persona exactly, though close enough, but none of them really go to the same lengths as you do to 'play' a character, i.e. 'Dev' - and maybe that's the difference. This forum and their presence in it is simply nearer RL to those who are happy to take the step into real life meetings.

I personally find getting to know the real people, with the blurrier and more complex reality of who they are versus a one-dimensional 'character,' far more rewarding. It does demand more psychologically to develop real friendships (even if you never do meet in person), and hence requires more of a commitment than just time spent for passing entertainment value here - but I think it can be greatly worth the investment. Truthfully, the attitude that forum members are just personas unconnected with real flesh-and-blood individuals I find a little disturbing.

[devogue]

Truthfully, the attitude that forum members are just personas unconnected with real flesh-and-blood individuals I find a little disturbing.

Of course I realise that people here are connected to real flesh and blood individuals, but the point is that we are choosing to interact in a very particular and (and necessary) way, by means of the internet.

I already know loads of people in the flesh, shit loads more than I know here. I interact with them in a particular way - no way would I want to chat with my best RL friend, my dad or my wife on an internet forum - Mrs Dev's one time ambition to register on TAF or wherever seriously freaked me out. In the same way I don't want to have loads of meetings with people I've met online - I don't want to know the vast majority of you in real life because I feel that it would diminish the enjoyment I take out of this community in its natural form.

[Pappa]

I don't want to know the vast majority of you in real life because I feel that it would diminish the enjoyment I take out of this community in its natural form.

I've always felt that meeting forum members only added to the enjoyment (even the one's I've never met).

[Hermit]

I'm not sure that the things which seem so new about talking online are really that new, I suspect they are near to things we lost as people moved about more geographically and long standing communities dwindled. Telling stories, chewing the cud, commenting on the state of the world, and that most human thing, trying to figure it all out - I think we are moving back to a more natural state where these things are everyday parts of life, away from the transience of constant flows of strangers or near strangers. I suspect in countries with less fluid people movement, and less TV a great deal of time is spent as we do here, in fact that's more than just a suspicion.

Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention, Floppit. It is so true and obvious, but if you had not remarked on it, it would have escaped my attention altogether, and that is even though I became aware of Marshall McLuhan's prediction some time during the seventies that electronic means of communications will turn this planet into something he called 'the global village'.

[Tigger]

Good post, Dev, as usual. Well written and considered, but I disagree, and that will probably have to be the way it is. When you say - and it's not taken out of context, just a snippet, not a quote mine for insidious purposes, you cannot and should not then expect members of the community who use the forum as it really is, as an internet forum full of avatars, sigs, and the rough and tumble of internetica, to feel the same hurt and emotions that you feel because you have met other people in real life. The onus is on you to fit back in with the unique electronic vibe of the internet forum, not on other members to accommodate your new found extra-forum relationships., I can only say that is total bollocks from my perspective. Why I can't expect that is beyond me and many others, especially here. You have found that there is a more human side to the people that you have met in real life, yet you prefer to hide behind your online persona rather than taking life by the bollocks and using the Internet for what it is: it is a means of communication between people, not avatars and pretence, and that is that. If you haven't got the will (or time) to take it to the next level as many of here have, then you are not, frankly, in a position to criticise us and have the (or any) forum stay the way you want it. You yourself have said things change and we can't stop them. It has moved on, we have, a lot of us, moved on with it. Join us.

[JimC]

If you added the hours you spend here to your annual leave you could have a month off a year.

As I said earlier in this thread - there are no rules to this. As I also said, meeting a bunch of people from herein RL makes the experience richer. They don't come across totally as the same persona exactly, though close enough, but none of them really go to the same lengths as you do to 'play' a character, i.e. 'Dev' - and maybe that's the difference. This forum and their presence in it is simply nearer RL to those who are happy to take the step into real life meetings.

Much truth there is in this post...

Dev has an idiosyncratic view of forum life which I am sure is true for him, and it is perfectly reasonable that this leads him to avoid local meet-ups; a pity, I think, but a decision I can respect.

However, I doubt his reasoning generalises for the majority, whose various meet-ups have indeed been a source of innocent merriment...

If your assertion about members who are thoroughly into playing a character is true (as I suspect it is), then one would predict that a certain Clinton Huxley may be averse to meet-ups as well, which would alson be a pity...

However, I must not speak for the great man himself; Clinton, get your arse down to this thread and comment!

[Bella Fortuna]

I'd love to meet Clinton someday.

I'd love even more to meet the real person behind that character who has kept us so entertained.

[JimC]

I'd love to meet Clinton someday.

I'd love even more to meet the real person behind that character who has kept us so entertained.

So would I, but if Rum's theory is correct, it may be unlikely...

However, hopefully Clinton will prove us wrong one day!

[FBM]

Shouldn't the subject line read 'The Internet or social life'?

[AshtonBlack]

I'd love to meet Clinton someday.

I'd love even more to meet the real person behind that character who has kept us so entertained.

This too, I would like to buy him a beer one day!