Tigger wrote: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!
. And then when they come back, they can 
). They have both given me some gorgeous memories.
