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Don't Dismiss Online Relationships As Fantasy
Columnist Regina Lynn has a look at how online relationships seem to be blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. "The common thread among these stories is that people get deeply involved in online relationships and make decisions about their real lives. Calling any of these online relationships 'fantasy' dismisses the impact they have on the people involved and on those closest to them... I have yet to encounter anything that challenges my core belief: Relationships are real wherever they form."
Relationships are only as real as the people in them. If the person is pretending to be something their not, even by a little bit, that can be greatly magnified online. As long as the relationship STAYS online, it's fine... But meeting the person in real life can be a disaster.
So sure, don't just dismiss them as fantasy, but don't just accept them as reality, either. Same as pretty much everything else in the world.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
recently i had a discussion with a friend concerning the nature of community in general and in particular the relationships that make up the online gaming experience. the emotions felt are real. the connections made between individuals are real. therefore imo online relationships are real just as the ones i experience in the office or at home or at the coffee shop are. however, while they may be real, because they comprise real human experience, they are qualitatively different. and i think that this is where it becomes difficult. we haven't related to each other in the ways presented through this new medium, ever. this means that in the social background the rules have yet to be established, the presupposed boundaries and entry points are not agreed upon, leaving us in a liminal stage. it appears to me that once these things are more hashed out the debates about the 'reality' of the nature of online relationships will fade.
They are real alright.
Depends. As I have noticed, online relationships' realness depends on how well they pass the test of time, and how well the relationship survives the shit it goes through.
Now that I come to think about it, it's the exact same thing in real-life relationships. Real-life one night stands or relationships that live no longer than a couple of weeks have little credibility.
You just got troll'd!
I know multiple couples who are now married, 2 of which have children, who met online in a band's message forum (Eisley's Laughing City) so it can work. I've dated a couple girls through the forum but i don't have the personality for long distance relationships. With one I was very much in love but the distance just erodes things away.
I always shake my head when i hear respected professionals denounce online relationships as fake. It just goes to show they have no understanding of the online culture.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I don't see the problem. The internet is just a communication-medium. Sure they've got the right to be pissed.
Nobody was physically harmed, but quite possibly somone had their fun spoiled. Purposefully destroying the fun of others is rude, regardless of how it happens.
Similarily, if you're sitting in a park and having a quiet talk with someone, you'd be annoyed at someone who decided to leave their ghetto-blaster, playing the soundtrack of a porn-movie at full volume 2 meters away from you. This action too, hurts noone physically (aslong as it's not loud enough to be hearing-damaging) but nevertheless I think you'd find most people would be annoyed at it.
Is it ridicoloous for an amateur theatre-group to have a play where a wedding is part of it ?
And if not, why would it be more or less ridicolous if the players use online avatars rather than their own physical bodies ?
Does the ridicolousness change if some of the players involved have a crush on eachothers ? It's not as if it's unheard of for actors who *play* a couple to also *be* a couple. (or to become one during the period of the play)
I guess I just don't get it. Are relationships that depend in part or in whole on letters, telephones or any other method of communication not "real" ? Why'd it make a difference if your messages go trough the internet rather than trough the telephone-network ?
In all cases you're talking to real people. In all cases there's a real chance that one of the involved persons are less than completely honest. That's part of life, nothing new about it.
Maybe I'm biased. My first girlfriend I learned to know to a significant part trough writing old-fashioned letters. We had 2-3 wonderful years together. My wife I met trough exchanging email. I find the two situations to be very similar, and don't see what's so special about one being "online" and the other being in "real life" at all. If we'd been chatting or role-playing together online, I don't know what the fundamental difference between that and telephone should be.
I wonder what the actual percentage of 'relationships' online have turned out where one of them was being clearly deceitful, i.e. a male pretending to be female. It's probably really really low, yet people have this unreal anxiety that they can't trust someone simply because they haven't met them face to face.
Sure, caution is needed, but many people are finding love online, and if it works for them, can't we be happy for them? It's hard to meet people in today's society. It's not like we have town dances or whatever the devil they did 100 years ago. (yes, i'm sure some town's have dances still). And really, in the 19th and early 20th century many relationships developed via letters. My grandmother used to send daily 'what's up' postcards to people in the next town before phones, and when phones came along I'm sure many people new each other first only through that medium. So I don't think this is a new phenomenon. If you make the assumption that the other person is honest and fall in love with them, and that assumption is correct, you win. If it somehow isn't, well, there are 50 ways to leave your lover.
Based off what I've seen, we could all use more lovin, online or otherwise. Won't get it as easy by pigeonholing your possible relationships avenues.
"I only speak the truth"
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isn't it about swordplay and magic and killing things? it's called escapism: a place for people to go and do things they can't do in real life. therefore, you can't hold the standards of behavior of reality against it
so the guy made a bloody raiding party on a wedding. in reality, that's front page horrible news. in everquest, it seems to me to be par for the course
why do you expect any different, why do you think you ever could expect any different? everquest: people have swords and spells. they hurt things. that's the whole damn point of it to begin with: pointless violent escapism. and that's not bad: it's a harmless outlet
i don't think you are deluded. i don't think you are taking something too seriously. i just don't think you understand the rules here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Right, because no one puts on perfume or aftershave to hide their true scent in person.
And no one works on changing their voice so they can appear to be more (or less depending) authoritative than their normal voice makes them seem.
And no one dresses up (or down) to try and mask their socio-economic status from whatever social circle they're trying to get into.
And no one flat out lies about themselves in the real world too. All perfectly honest.
Just because you're close enough to a person that you could slap them, doesn't mean the person is any less of a mirage than they are online. Hell, in the world of blogs, you can often find out more about someone than you can from meeting them.
True in the context of this article. Online relationships that involve any hint of intimacy is fantasy. True intimacy can only be achieved through physical closeness. This is just a bunch of crap designed for the modern age.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
This is writing by a columnist, not a study or any kind of rigorous analysis. It is written by someone whose job is to celebrate and market sexual neurosis as a way of spicing up Wired's otherwise geek-heavy material. It is not science. It doesn't even pretend.
This reminder brought to you by the people out there who haven't yet succumbed to iPhone-style hype religion about the internet, technology or humanity.
Thank you for reading. You will now be returned to your regular neurotic programming.
technical writing / development
I think meeting people online is a great way to meet new and interesting people, with the added fact that you *generally* get an idea about a person from their profile or what they say without the hassle of shouting into their ear in a bar or the discomfort of a first date. I went onto a couple of sites when I first moved to Vancouver, in addition to meeting people in day-to-day situations, online helped me meet quite a few new and interesting people that I wouldn't have met in a strange city. Indeed I first started chatting to a girl a 2 years ago and we kept in touch via the site and msn for several months before going on a first date - we've just got married and she's 5 months pregnant (wahoo).
Obviously there's dangers to meeting people and forming relationships online, but there's similar dangers to meeting someone in a store or in a bar - the advantage that online provides is you can figure out generally if the person is genuine, their likes and dislikes and it *can* save several dates and then realizing you like different things.
If it worked for me.. it can work for anyone else.. but just like everyday life, you have to keep your wits about you.
They existed solely in your head. Most people can also find someone who has a relationship with them in their head.
There is no two way communication. There is your feeling towards someone else, it does not mean they have the same relationship with you.
Fortunately, when the fantasy is smashed, most people can get up and go on..but some keep living their fantasy until they believe it is true.
The problem with online relationships, is that people bond(i.e. have mutualy ralationship fantasy) without key data. Looks, mannerisms, daily behaviour off line.
All of which is important, for very real reasons.
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I'm a huge internet troll, mainly because i know i couldn't get away that kind of behavior in the real world. my personality online and off are night and day. here i am loud angry and rude. in real life i am quite pleasant. for me, the internet represents catharsis: a mental taking out the trash that leaves me capable of not blowing my stack in the real world
in other words, my personality here is not only completely unlike my personality in real life, my personality here allows me to be someone else in real life. and i completely understand the boundaries
This attitude is precisely the reason I despise internet trolls. Not because of the whole signal-to-noise ratio thing; newbies posting stupid questions and other minor breaches of nettiquette accomplish roughly the same thing and I don't mind them at all. No, the reason I hate trolls is because they treat the internet like some kind of damned videogame and other people on it like NPCs at worst, other players to be "beaten" in the "game" at best. But despite the fact that you're accessing the internet through a keyboard and screen, it's not a damn game. And I don't mean that the internet should be a serious, demure place of pure business and scholarship either; I'm here to have fun more often than I'm here to do work. I just mean that the internet is less like baseball and more like a game of catch, less like the debate team and more like chatting in the living room with your friends. It's not a competition, you can't win at it, and so playing manipulative social games trying to get certain reactions out of certain people for fun (or "catharsis" as you say) is just as despicable as if you were to treat IRL conversations with your friends that way. (Granted, some people do the same thing in real life, and I'd consider them assholes too).
Do you assume a different persona and play social games when you converse over the phone? How about through postal mail, on the off chance that you actually write letters to people? Why is the internet any different? It's just another means of communication - one which, due to its breadth and efficiency, is if anything MORE like real life than the phone or mail.
The same thing applies to people who are dicks in the non-game aspects of online games, e.g. game chat. Yes, if you're playing a competitive game the objective is to blow up the other guy or what have you, and you shouldn't complain that people are being "mean" when they do so efficiently. At the same time, there's this little thing called good sportsmanship which has been pretty well established in real world competitive activities, and I see no reason why it applies any less online. So, just because someone is competing against you in something that actually IS a game on the internet, doesn't mean that when you communicate with them within the context of the game (but "out of character", if such a concept is relevant) you're free to be a dick, anymore than it's OK to shout demeaning insults at the other team in a real-world sport, or to gloat over your victory or throw a tantrum over your loss.
On the other hand, there is something to be said for people behaving differently in person and online. Someone may be more or less comfortable in one venue than in the other, and so censor certain parts of themselves where they're not comfortable expressing such traits. But then, that just gets back to what the person you're responding to was saying; some people reveal their "true personality" more online than they do in real life. If you might be inclined to be an asshole in person but don't feel that that's OK, so instead you're an asshole on the internet (which honestly I've never seen you be, here on Slashdot at least), then that means that somewhere in your "true personality", you're an asshole, and you just censor that in real life and let it out on the internet so it doesn't stay bottled up. Even if the actual personas you're adopting online are all fake and consciously so, just put on for the response that other people give
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."