"IRL" vs. "Online"

If I find out y'all ain't real Ise goan giv birth to a cow.

Ouch.

Oh, and I'm not real. Well, I am, but some of my other ID's include dlowan, Sofia, LibertyD, Gautam, and gustavratzenhoffer. Just so's ya know.

Ok, fer me it works like this:

I don't really chat or IM people that I don't know in the 'brick and mortar' world, cept dlowan.

Google is not an abstract concept to me. They pay me every month. I pay them every month. I speak to their employees on the phone. The day before yesterday I (and some other webmasters) pitched a fit at them and they pulled a new program they had launched a day before and decided to rework it with our complaints.

I buy stuff on the net. It's not imaginary stuff it arrives at my door and they take real money from my account.

I will soon be paying over 500 bucks a month to host this site. That's money deducted from a real bank account and to support that this site (pronnounced 'massage parlour') on this here inteeernet (pronnounced 'porn shop') will have to pay me real money.

I build business applications online. I just setup an online system where a company's users clock in through theor browsers online and the system calculates their wages and such.

They get paid real money.

I will buy some groceries tonight online. They'll come tomorrow. It saves me time and I don't have to get upand shop. This allows me more time to see fake boobs at a club.

To me the net is as real as "real life".

When people don't understand it it's magical. When you have to pay for it and fix it or run a business on it it becomes more real.

Doh, that was a very real problem with the server just now.

Good, I thought I had gone nuts.

Not mutually exclusive lady.

It is a complex thing for me.

People I know via the net are real to me - especially if I know them pretty well, but it is another sort of real, I think - I know this because, when I first voice-chatted I was actually completely shocked. Not sure if I really know why - but it was something to do with realising that this friend (and him being male had something to do with it, I think) to whom I had been speaking quite unreservedly, was not something basically in my head, but a real, live person.

I mean I KNEW he was real - but I didn't REALLY know it until that moment, and it felt extremely odd, and rather weird. I am used to that, now, of course - but I can imagine that meeting a net friend for the first time will be similarly odd - I have not done so yet. Probably Margo will be the first one of you I meet - and I expect few surprises. I suppose it becomes as familiar as voice-chat is to me now, pretty quickly - although I really only voice chat with one person. I do not imagine it would be more than an initial shock to meet me, as I am me wherever I am.

I have ordered a few books online - nothing more - and it is nice when they materialise. I CERTAINLY know they are real if I order them from the USA, since our dollar is soooo weak, but I do no other online shopping.

The other "unreal" bit of online life for me is that it occurs late at night - and on weekends when I am not otherwise busy - so it is a sort of "crevice" thing in my life (bigger in the last year, cos I have been poor and sick a lot) - this means it occupies a niche apart from my normal life - sort of like a secret little world! This gives it an unreality.

I imagine doing business over the net makes it much more real.

If I find out where this smegging "lady" thing comes from, I will stomp on the source!

If my net and brick and mortar worlds collided, though, I would feel like George Costanza did in "Seinfeld" - when his friend and fiance worlds collided!!!!!!!!!

It would kill Independent Sofia, as well.

Sometimes, I am tempted to try to make a Gathering, but I love everyone being perfect without misplaced freckles or varicose veins. In my mind, those things shouldn't matter ANYWAY. Vision is good, but it can be a handicap sometimes...

<I have often thought one or two people here could be everybody...>

I like the majic.

dlowan, Yew and sozobe should get married. Ask her why.

Ha!!

I told you she was just another of my ID's... that proves it.

It means "kneader of bread". Go stomp hlAfdige.

Or yew can blame zenraven. Or Jerry Lewis. Take yer pick lady.

Why the smeg should Soz and I get married.....Soz?

To me it's not about worlds colliding. It's about circles converging.

I don't give my cell phone number to my business clients and such simply cause I don't want them calling me when I am off.

I don't give my work number to friends cause I don''t want them calling when I am working.

I don't give out my email address (cept to special people) cause I don't want spam.

I don't use my real name online simply because I am known in webmaster/white hat hacking circles under a screen name and my real name makes no sense to them.

I don't give my credit card number out to.. actually I do. Otherwise the midgets have censored stuff over them.

" Otherwise the midgets have censored stuff over them."

Huh?

I know I am being thick, but, huh?

(Craven likes to look at nekkid midgets online, and he has to ante up or else they have little black rectangles strategically placed.)

Dlowan, I sent Craven an email with the subject line "Worlds Collide" during an exchange re: the website, and quoted a line from that episode. That's what he's on about.

aha