Tara ☆ Star ([info]tarastara) wrote,
@ 2009-07-07 01:06:00
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a question for lj
Why do people feel the need to invalidate feelings of other people just because whatever is happening that makes them feel that way is on the internet?

Why do people think that people who they only know of on the internet are not real?

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[info]soulrockcandy
2009-07-07 08:12 am UTC (link)
Because the internet is full of nothing but 80 year old men posing as 13 year old girls or something? I don't know.

I connect more easily to people through text than through speech anyway so I feel more for internet people than "real people." This probably makes me a fake person too.

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[info]tarastara
2009-07-07 08:23 am UTC (link)
Yeah, but you'd think 80-year-old men would know better.

Probably. I am the same way.

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what aww
[info]toastybat
2009-07-07 08:47 am UTC (link)

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Re: what aww
[info]tarastara
2009-07-07 08:59 am UTC (link)
WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS I CAN'T TALK IRL

THIS IS A FACT

UNLESS IT'S TO YOU, AND EVEN THEN I CAN'T REALLY DO IT VERY WELL

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[info]whata
2009-07-07 09:53 am UTC (link)
shit.

my secret. it is out in the open.

But seriously I'm kind of the same way I think it's way easier to type than to talk on the phone or in person or whatever. 8C haha shut-in much of course not

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[info]buttcones_inc
2009-07-07 01:06 pm UTC (link)
Ffff I'm also the same way. 8( And even online, I'm really socially debilitated and find it so hard to talk even if I want to. Just not as much as I am in real life.

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[info]shinyseaking
2009-07-07 10:44 pm UTC (link)
Joining in on the text > speech agreement...I'm much quicker to respond here, too. IRL I just go "uh...okay" to pretty much everything.

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[info]robohomo
2009-07-07 08:16 am UTC (link)
Because we're not real.

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[info]gillian_seed2
2009-07-07 02:49 pm UTC (link)
And then John was a zombie.

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[info]jaimonster
2009-07-07 08:18 am UTC (link)
See Icon.

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[info]meiko
2009-07-07 08:20 am UTC (link)
I am a collective nightmare.

And I was going to make a Final Fantasy joke but then I realized you are not gay enough to play FF 10.

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[info]iscelit
2009-07-07 08:42 am UTC (link)
I AM make it anyway `w`(\

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[info]meiko
2009-07-07 09:21 am UTC (link)
I forgot when I was in the shower rofl.

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[info]iscelit
2009-07-07 11:24 pm UTC (link)

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[info]iscelit
2009-07-07 08:45 am UTC (link)
dis is sum matrix shit nothing is real

just kidding i don't have the slightest idea

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[info]dougras
2009-07-07 08:54 am UTC (link)
I will tell you a little story, Miss Star.

I made an internet friend back in 2001. She was from New Zealand. We chatted. We kept in touch. We got to know each other very well. She evidently considered me to be one of her closest internet friends, and I felt the same.

We haven't talked much recently - her life has gotten in the way, but we still keep in touch as much as we can.

In 2008, after chatting with her and sending emails and being in games with her, I went to New Zealand and I met her, face-to-face. And I met her brother, whom I had also known from the internets since like 2004. And I stayed with them and their family for a week.

Her mother was delighted to have me, because she said that she'd heard so much about me over the years that she was looking forward to finally having a chance to meet me, her daughter had talked about me so much.

And the thing is? When we met, we basically never stopped talking and chatting and having delightful banter and playing videogames and bothering each other because we were friends - we'd been friends for seven years, the fact that we'd never seen each other in person hadn't kept us from being friends all that time - and our friendship didn't start the moment we found each other at the airport either - our friendship had started on AIM in 2001, and in playing stupid characters in an RPG together online. Meeting in real life may have made us slightly closer friends, but us not meeting before hadn't kept us from being friends.

I was real to her, and she was real to me, before we hugged in that airport, though we only spoke before in text messages.

By that same token, when someone you considered to be a friend from the internet lashes out and says spiteful, mean things, it cuts just as much as if someone you knew in "real life" said it to your face.

But that's another story for another time.

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[info]soulrockcandy
2009-07-07 09:02 am UTC (link)
I think I've heard this story before.

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[info]dougras
2009-07-07 10:27 am UTC (link)
You have.

But it's a good story about people on the internet being real.

<3

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[info]tarastara
2009-07-08 04:18 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately, not everybody thinks like you two do. I guess they're not lucky enough to have had experiences like you and I have had, I guess that helps.

Edited at 2009-07-08 04:18 am UTC

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[info]athenemiranda
2009-07-07 11:39 am UTC (link)
I met my husband on the internets.

But I have also met people on the internets who were not real - compulsive liars, pseuicides, insincere attention whores. I think they exist to make the other people realer.

I guess the reason people invalidate internets-related feelings is because of the idea that you can just log off and go to bed. Except that emotions don't work that way.

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[info]ladynorbert
2009-07-07 01:34 pm UTC (link)
This. I was going to say almost all of this (except for the husband part), but you worded it so exactly that I have nothing to add.

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[info]gillian_seed2
2009-07-07 02:48 pm UTC (link)
Distance, I guess. I try to be civil, but I make mistakes anyways.

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[info]pseudo_parcel
2009-07-07 03:26 pm UTC (link)
Probably it's the whole LOL INTERNET mentality that so many people seem to have. That nothing that happens on the internet should ever matter to anything in real life because "LOL INTERNET."

Which is pretty shitty and used by too many people to excuse horrible behavior.

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[info]tarastara
2009-07-08 04:16 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I agree. I wish I could say that that attitude came from somewhere other than ED, but.

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[info]michikitty
2009-07-07 07:18 pm UTC (link)
</strike>This is probably not a good time to say I'm really a serial killer trying to gain your trust</strike>

I blame the physical distance involved tends to make people forget that there's still a living breathing person on the other end of the tubes coupled with the bad media the internet's gotten for how people have abused the trust of others online.

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[info]moonscepter
2009-07-07 10:33 pm UTC (link)
I SEE YOU MET MY EX-GIRLFRIEND SARAH

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[info]oik
2009-07-07 10:56 pm UTC (link)
I think it's not so much that people on the internets are not real, but that an internets person's emotions have little to no effect on the other person's life. Like, if I hurt your feelings real bad, what would it do to me? Not much. I think that's what it is. But I guess that only counts if you're not deeply involved in an online community. If I was internets friends with all your friends, they'd probably all verbally abuse me for hurting your feelings. Yeah?

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[info]tarastara
2009-07-08 04:15 am UTC (link)
I guess neither do strangers offline. People tend to make a point of how internet people don't matter, though.

Something to ask them, not me.

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[info]oik
2009-07-08 07:58 am UTC (link)
maybe they are insecure

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