Internet interaction

Although it still enables you to (almost) totally hide your real emotions so you can still tell a whole load of lies if you're good enough with words.

Both are a bit of a cop out from actual human interaction.

they just moved back to london and we spoke on the phone and said "no more letters i guess" and realised this was sad and so have decided to continue to write letters to one another even though we have the easy option of every other kind of contact now, inc.REAL LIFE FACE TO FACE blah blah blab

cz letters are nice cz you can draw pictures!!

"get a life" = "i hate and fear reading"

I guess I was more thinking on the lines of forming relationships through nothing but the written medium sometimes it does work out if both parties are totally sincere but it can be dangerous to commit yourself too much on what can well be little more than sweet pretense.

I have many internet acquaintances, and a couple of those are people that I would regard (very much) as friends despite the fact we have never met (and perhaps never will meet). I suppose it depends on what you class 'friendship' to be: someone you like, and with whom you have things in common - similar ideas/sense of humour/tastes in music for example, someone with whom you are happy swapping more than just superficial pleasantries, someone whose opinions you respect, someone whose life genuinely interests you, a mutually-supportive person you care about and whose company you enjoy.

I see very little difference between that type of friendship in real life, and once conducted electronically. People don't have to exist in the same room as you do for them to enrich your life.

It's also cheaper, because you don't have to buy them beer.

We read about lovers from over a hundred years ago corresponding only by letters, having no idea that in the future these letters would be bound into books and sold to romantics everywhere. Surely, a hundred years from now, people will find those old internet love affairs to be just as passionate and old-fashioned?

(i know stuff has been written abt the 15th-18th century)

<serious>

When I was about 17, I had a close friendship with a schoolfriend which was carried out almost entirely by mail. We rarely saw each other on our own at school, but wrote intimate letters to each other about once a week. None of our friends knew about the letters, or realised how close we were.

I believe personally that quite a degree of it has to do with your ability with the written word, not always a technical ability but I guess an ability to influence with words, if you say things in the right way it's going to reach someone easier. But then again if don't have a good heart then it's not going to work in any case (unless you're great liar)

Guess the same thing happens in real life, with the way you speak, gesturing/mannerisms, physique, taste in clothes. But then again if don't have a good heart then it's not going to work in any case (unless you're great liar)

Fashion and Apparence probably does matter to a certain extent even on the internet, like the nickname/psudonym/email address you use (like i'd probably be even less credible than i am if i sign off as "k3N c")

if i didn't know that she looked hott, no kind of ability with the written word could persuade me

by ability with the written word I meant ability to express oneself, not like "cor check out his/her perfect grammar, swoon".

I agree with Ken, but who is the alpha male/female on the net, even if photos etc are used and you know exactly how someone looks, isn't it still different?

As to Internet interaction: I've come to thinking I'm even more incompetent online that I am IRL. Which is saying something.

Re: Turkle's Book - Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995). Yeah, it's kinda old, as it dealt with MUD's where the founding idea was to create a new personality. So, I think it's a red-herring to quote the old po-mo multiplicity arguements about identity creation online. I think people try and be honest online, but then it is so easy to edit out the bad bits of one's personality, and become a "character".

Anyway --

I really don't know about that. The pen pal/correspondent doesn't have the same air of "this is my only human contact" as the chat room.

-- Andrew Farrell

Yeah, but at the time, it often was the letter-writers' only human contact, or at least to a greater degree than that's true of chat-roomers. There's a whole phenomenon of it on the American frontier, where it might be several days' travel to the next person (or, more frequently, to the next family; in which case it isn't "only human contact" at issue but "only human contact outside the people who raised you.")

I'll digest the rest of the thread soon, I'm just home and there's a lot of ILEiness.

not a lot of love for turkle on here is there. i'm starting alone together and enjoying it. the writing is great imo. lol @ this thread title.

this thread is hilarious, feels kinda like mid-90s horrible kitschy retro ironic spaceman album covers