Are you more comfortable with people on the Internet v. the 'Real World'
First of all, thank you for all your comments below on the issue of whether anonymous comments should or should not be allowed. For now, I am going to continue to allow them, since I am giving great weight to the fact that some people are shy or at a lost at how to post without creating his/her own blog. Being limited in my computer skills (I cannot even post pictures properly), I can identify, so the anonymous post will remain absent mis-use or abuse in the future. My own ego of feeling wounded will take a back set to the concerns posted by those who do read this blog and want to post.
The question that I really wanted to address, and I suppose got lost in the shuffle had to do with the nature of who we are and how we interact with people on the internet v. the real world.
The title of my post was Who are You, and mirelle, sent me an email indicating that this was a header she had used in the past herself, and she did receive some interesting responses. If offended because I borrowed the title, please excuse me Mire, and I apologize if it felt as if I was plagiarism your post. But the issue of who we are made me think about the following.
Here are the questions of the day: Are you more comfortable with people in person or in the real world? Do you tend to be bolder, ruder, more sexual or cruder with others on the internet as opposed to those in person? In other words, is it easier to let your hair down? Do you give people on the internet more credit, think they are kinder, gentler, sweeter, more giving more loving than you would give people in person? In other words, does the veil of the internet make people more attractive to you where the warts, scars and farts disappear to some extent?
Thank you for your minds.
The question that I really wanted to address, and I suppose got lost in the shuffle had to do with the nature of who we are and how we interact with people on the internet v. the real world.
The title of my post was Who are You, and mirelle, sent me an email indicating that this was a header she had used in the past herself, and she did receive some interesting responses. If offended because I borrowed the title, please excuse me Mire, and I apologize if it felt as if I was plagiarism your post. But the issue of who we are made me think about the following.
Here are the questions of the day: Are you more comfortable with people in person or in the real world? Do you tend to be bolder, ruder, more sexual or cruder with others on the internet as opposed to those in person? In other words, is it easier to let your hair down? Do you give people on the internet more credit, think they are kinder, gentler, sweeter, more giving more loving than you would give people in person? In other words, does the veil of the internet make people more attractive to you where the warts, scars and farts disappear to some extent?
Thank you for your minds.
6 Comments:
Barbara, you certainly intended no offense in using the title -- and none was taken. xoxoxo
I think that I am pretty much the same person in real life as I am on-line, only the name is different.
My artwork is different, although most of my friends in real life know about my site now, as they are my friends, and we wouldn`t be good friends if they didn`t know all there is to know about me! It wouldn`t feel right keeping secrets from my friends!
Do I feel that the people I have met on-line are different from my real-life friends?
Well yes, in as much as my real life friends are long-time friends, so we know each other well now, all our problems, moods, likes, dislikes,all of these things we know about each other.
I have people on-line who I also see as hopefully becoming long-term friends, where I would want to be there to listen to their problems and their joyful moments too.
It would obviously be more real to know what people look like, and do more of a pen-pal thing, but perhaps there will be people on-line who enjoy talking with a degree of anon, and wouldn`t actually like that at all.
I think talking to people on-line is about building trust, after all, how do you know that someone is actually who they say they are?
I agree with normaljew in that it would be difficult to hide personality traits on or off-line, as they would be bound to surface at some point.
What I like about the internet is meeting people from all walks of life, from different countries around the world.
And yes, there are a few people on-line who now consider to be friends, and who I look forward to hearing from.
I was working through the night on a commission last week, and feeling rather tired and down, when an email arrived from normaljew which cheered me up, made me smile, and kept me going. Thanks normaljew!
It is moments like these which are quite wonderful!
I treat everyone the way I'd like to be treated either in person or online. The one major thing that is missed while forming online relationships is emotion or tone behind words.
I agree atreau, perhaps the absence of tone and emotion, and also our inability to see body language while communicating on-line, is why it is easy for people to over-react or take the wrong meaning from what they are reading.
Human communication is incredibly complex.
marrolian:
"The screen grabs our attention: we fall into it, pour out our fantasies."
How very well, and accurately put. I can identify entirely.
Sometimes, I have to watch what I say, because, as a lover of the written word, I think more often than not, I am falling for myself. (see my post above on falling.)
Having the capability to read over my words before impulsively allowing them to fly away (never to return) makes a huge difference between the way I come across online vs reality. ;)
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