Social life and the Internet

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So I would like to know. How has the world wide web changed your social life? For me it is the greatest thing ever. It makes me feel like people are actually talking to my post and I am getting someone to say something. Although a lot of people think I'm some kind of spammer on other forums only because that is I don't have that many people to talk to. I go to countless forums to chat with people to await their responces. It is great that they don't know me and that I am chatting with them and it makes me feel like I have someone to talk to. I would like to know how has the internet affected your social life?

Once I've been confident enough to use it, yes, it has been beneficial, but will never replace real life in the long run.

The internet gives me the ability to interact with people on a level I have a hard time achieving in person. It certainly hasn't been the greatest thing ever for me, but it is a great tool when used properly.

I agree

The internet acts as a mask or a veil for me. I'm ... abominably awkward in person. When writing, I still *feel* awkward as I do my side of the communcation, but I don't transmit this to the reader unless I choose to.

Additionally, it's my work as I have been employed as both a network and unix systems engineer. To be honest I get along less well with netengs than with unix sysengs, but nonetheless a great many of the interests I have are networking- or unix-related, and it's fun to be around other folks who find it as fascinating as I do. So in short another, thing the internet provides is something to talk about, something to groove about, something to feel a part of in a way that matters, and not just for me.

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Edit for typos. Is it perspicacity to edit one's old posts for spelling mistakes, or just bloody-mindedness?

Last edited by AngelKnight on 28 Aug 2011, 4:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can communicate a thousand times better online than I can in RL. I've given up ever trying to meet up with people I've come to know online as nobody ever believes it's the same person and I just lose an online friend when they meet the freak.

If only people in RL would would hold up a little smiley card after every sentence things would be so much simpler.

Yes, almost. It has changed and improved my life in a way i had never expected. Well, even my love life.

I'm all about writing and reading. Physical contacts (aka RL by some) are stressful for all involved. Talking in person or on the phone doesn't work for me. I'm searching for words and can't find them, i start stuttering and act like the most awkward person the world has ever seen. It's just too much.

Online i can express myself much better and ain't distracted by gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice and the entire environment.

Though i know what people mean when they talk about RL, i don't understand the term 'real' in this context. If only the perception through physical senses would be real, what is then a thought, an idea, a feeling, or a dream? Neither of them can be perceived physically unless we express it. But to me they are much more real and tangible than physical stuff.

People who don't get social gratification through text based communication do not think that internet text chat systems are real. This is because they don't feel like they have gotten anything meaningful out of the situation. Their senses haven't been adequately stimulated such as is the case in their other friendships.

People like us, who have difficulty in "meat-space" have more real social experiences in text chats. Real is just defined by how fulfilling the social interaction is for you. For me, the internet is my real social circle, and real life is just a pursuit in futility, a game of three dimensional sensory bombardment. The real me only exists online and around only two other people in real life. That real me is considered to be a false mask to anyone else who sees it in person, but in "cyber-space" I am told that I am more genuine and engaging than most.

Although, I prefer IRC chat, not this e-snail-mail.

I thought the internet was helping at one point but over the years I've noticed that I'm a complete thread-killer.

I'm awkward in real life, although I am much better now at hiding a lot of my traits. Online it can be easier, but I still don't find it overly easy. A lot of the time I still don't know what to say, and sometimes I still say the wrong thing.

I think other people may just find me eternally boring. It's a shame I find myself and my own interests fascinating really

For me personally, online has helped make me find resources that I would otherwise not know about. My parents don't help me out with information, other parents don't want to help me directly because I either look like a kid or I'm that young adult doing fairly well and they are wondering in their minds what I'd want to do with their 18 year old.

I suppose being online has helped me find people who like me, though they are rarely around. Most of the time, I just come away more miserable than before.

If not for the Internet, I would have to talk to myself 24/7...

And/or my mom.

Socialising on the internet seems like the greatest thing ever to me as well!

I don't socialize in real life as I find it very difficult, I am much more comfortable talking to people online. In particular, I love forums because you can take as long as you like to think up your response. As I'm someone who likes to analyse every aspect of a conversation or debate in great detail , this is of great value to me.

I also find that if I post in a forum for a reasonable length of time, I start to feel a friendship with the other forum members even if I have never met them in real life.

For me, I've made a few acquaintances over the years, but I've made lifelong friends online. Friends that would mail me stuff for free or for the cost of shipping, and vice versa, friends that wrote me while incarcerated, friends that would talk to me on the phone when my real life friends weren't around back then. 2 of my friends at the very least, I've consistently communicated with them since like 2005. So for me anyway, a few of my "internet friends" are more reliable than my real life friends, I can think of no real life friend that's consistently been my friend since 7-8th grade. Keep in mind, without internet even, these friends would talk to me on the phone like over 5 times a week easy for like an hour at a time.

Besides these super reliable friends, from my old pool of "friends" on AIM, there's about 5 out of the 20 or so I used to have that I still talk to regularly, but I believe that's more from not being online for about 2 years.

I think my big problem with online friends, they just randomly inexplicably disappear, sometimes it's legitimate, but most of the time, I find out they blocked me or something. They're usually not ballsy enough to just tell me what I'm doing wrong, and actually seem to act very friendly or whatever toward me, and just block me later. So that sorta passive aggressiveness is something I dislike in online friendships. It happens in real life, too, but in real life, most of your friends are in a close proximity to you, so you know sorta what's happening, or you can resolve the situation easier, etc. Online, though, it's much easier for people to press the block button and not say what's wrong.

An alienating thing, too, my refusal to participate in new social networking sites and stuff. I'm stuck in my old ways, using AIM, etc, and not being cool and using Skype and Facebook and stuff. So that makes things worse with my real life friends, who've discovered the magical internet.

I'm actually more contactable on Facebook than on my phone nowadays, and more contactable on my phone than in person. Email and Facebook are directly linked so any updates to facebook cause my Gmail to instantly pop up an update for me. And while I don't stare at my phone, I do stare at my screen.

It's so much easier to type stuff than to say them. Also, for once I don't have to worry about sending wrong signals. Instead of all that ambiguous crap that I normally have to deal with, I get clear cut that really, really help in expressing and/or detecting non-literal meanings. Also, everyone can talk at more or less the same time without risk of interruption, there will never be "heard that wrong", and there will never be "can you repeat that?".

As a result it's easier to frame my thoughts and form coherent lines of text. Not having eyes looking at me/which I have to look at also removes that nervousness issue. I probably talk 2-3 times more in an online medium than in an equivalent spoken situation. Also, I type damn fast, so much so that at times it seems like I can actually talk faster through typing than through speech, all things considered.

It's just so natural to use technology really.