Shimbo-kun
I thought that it might have been a typo on your behalf.
I never make typos. I'm perfect (unless I'm not, in which case ignore previous statement).
Shimbo-kun
Visual (or perhaps in this case, it's more commonly "textual") interraction is much less personal, I feel, than direct, person-to-person interraction, which it cases that I've experienced, causes the relationship to be weakened, or more difficult to develope.
Visual interraction is not effected over the Internet unless a webcam is used. Aural interaction may occur. The clincher here, however, is tactile and olfactory interraction, even gustatory interraction (which is
really good when the attraction is particularly passionate). In any case, these are a variety of types of interractions that, in unison, make relationships very real. Most traditional couples never experience the gustatory, and few pay any conscious attention to the olfactory. And you certainly don't get tactile until the relationship becomes serious.
Because relationships and levels of interraction exist in gradients, and because a lot of people do not experience all the possible types of interraction, then online relationships have a similar relationship to most offline relationships that offline relationships have to my relationships.
If you are justified in calling online relationships ridiculous as a result, then I am justified in calling most couples in the world today ridiculous. That is not a statement I can make simply because I go further with my partners than others do. The fact that my relationships have ended and other relationships have survived 50+ years further show that their relationships, while not as extensively experiential as mine, still retain legitimacy. This extends backward and covers online relationships as well. If a successful 50-year couple can claim legitimacy over a failed relationship of mine, then an online relationship cannot be denied this justification.
Shimbo-kun
I never said that anything I was sayin was fact. Obviously, subjective adjectives like "rediculous," are subject to opinion in degree. Perhaps "rediculous" was a bad term to use, or perhaps I didn't explain well enough my standing point. I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone, and I hope that you didn't take it that way. I also appologize to anyone that I DID offend by using the word "rediculous".
Thank you. I would suggest you take care to avoid such blanket statements. To claim that an emotional reaction to a situation always serves a certain purpose is akin to claiming that every human is required to react the same way that you do, and that is rather a presumptuous stance to take.
Shimbo-kun
JoVo
People are also different in one-on-one situations than they are in large groups. People are different in a church setting than they are in a club. I fail to see how any of what you describe relates solely to the Internet.
It's often times difficult to get a good sense of one's personality online, is what I mean. And in all your examples, it's possible to view a person you know offline in all those contexts, while if you're online, you only get one view of him/her.
It's true. You see the person offline, but you see only one facet of the person. In order to get to know them more completely, you need to see them in their various modes. That was my point. Online is only one facet, just as the church, the club, the one-on-one, and the large group are each different facets. My point, which you may have missed, is that online is simply one more facet, not a different animal altogether.
Shimbo-kun
JoVo
And, in my case, I have friends online who I'd never hang out with in real life because they're annoying (and might disapprove of my rambunctious lifestyle). As Rej said, it goes both ways.
Yes, it does go bother ways, and I forgot to put that. It's a point I agree with. However, in the case you stated, it would seem as though those people are just people you don't want to interract with period, because you say they're annoying and that you wouldn't hang out with them in person, and that's only from an online perspective. The example I gave offered both offline and online contexts, and how someone can be desireable in one context, but not the other. Your example seems a bit one-sided, so it's not really comparable...
It is not, and you are not listening.
The example said that
I have friends online who I'd never hang out with
offline because
they would be annoying offline. Because they are friends, however, the implication is that
I enjoy hanging out with them online."The art of [reading] isn't hard to master."
Shimbo-kun
In reference to your "Case in point", I, too believe it is still possible to learn from people online, of course. Obviously, you're talking to real person on the other side of the computer, so you get real life responses. However, you can't learn the same things from a non-physical and in-person relationship that you can with an online one.
You are reiterating your thesis, but you aren't supporting it.
Shimbo-kun
That isn't to say you can't learn ANYTHING, but it's still limited.
As in
any relationship. My relationship with my coworkers, for instance, is limited. I can only hang out with them for minutes at the time, and the context of the workplace keeps us from getting into very deep, emotional conversations. I see them every day, but I can never really know them. In fact, I'd say that I know them
less than most of my online friends.
Your conception of the limitations of online relationships is simply the limitation of
any relationship experienced only through one medium. No relationship that exists only in one place and in one form can be very deep. Online relationships usually take several forms, one of which may even be the phone. These relationships diversify a great deal more than, say, a relationship between two people who only see each other on the schoolyard. Their legitimacy can be greater as a result, by the same criteria described at the beginning of this post.
Shimbo-kun
It's not like I haven't experienced feelings for people online. In fact, I became quite infatuated with one person, and that's when I realized that online relationships are definitely not the kind for me. I yearned to be with him, but I knew I couldn't because he was too far away, and it would be difficult, expensive, and probably rather awkward to ever meet in person. I learned a bit about myself from that, and also how to better interract with people I'm attracted to. However, I was not able to apply much of it in any offline context.
It happens. I had a relationship with a guy offline. We clicked really well when we first met at the club. We got together that night, and it was really nice. The sex was great. Then we got to know each other. He and I had nothing in common, despite our attraction for each other's physical bodies, and we never had anything interesting to talk about, except when we were fighting. I just stopped calling, and eventually he informed me that we were broken up.
I've had a total of two online relationships. Both have been meaningful; the emotional significance of one of them has only been surpassed by one offline relationship; and both of my online relationships were more fulfilling than the offline relationship I just described above.
Just because you have
one bad experience does not denegrate the entire category of a thing. If I eat a bad hamburger, that does not give me justification to call all hamburgers filthy rat sandwiches. Many people enjoy hamburgers everyday, and some even consider hamburgers their favorite food. Calling them filthy rat sandwiches would be false, and I would be more accurate if I simply stated my distaste for them.
Shimbo-kun
In any event, as I previously stated, I didn't intend to offend anyone, and I will be more careful in the future. I appologize for being insensitive.
It's all good. If you're ever insensitive (though in this case I was more offended by your use of a generalization than your use of a superlative), I'll just call you on it. It's what I do.
Shimbo-kun
As a side note, it seems that you must agree with at least part of what I said, because the last thing you said was, "I'm still friends with him, and I intend to meet him in person one day." Surely this means that there is something you feel you need from meeting him in person that couldn't be fulfilled with only an online relationship?
No, because I don't ever expect to have the relationship I once had with him. When we meet offline, it will be as friends, not as the lovers we once were.
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