my online community

[flea]

I'm still amazed by how involved I am in my invisible friends. I do sometimes dream of people at b.org, and when I read, my immediate reactions sometimes are in terms of people I've never met. For example, I was reading the new Gourmet, and there was an article by Perri Klass about teaching her son to cook before a 2-week campout with his 9th grade class so he'd have something valuable to contribute. With some added thoughts about maturity, tools for being an adult, etc. And all I could think of was jonquil's son - and I've never met jonquil, let alone her son. But there you are.

I think, for me, my online community replaces books, to some extent. I often felt as a child that the characters in books I enjoyed were my friends, or at least my friendly acquaintances. I was sometimes more interested in them than in actual people whom I knew. This is still the case, except with online people. And I often don't want to know them (you) any better than I do - I like our friendliness to be a bit distant and polite; I have no desire to IM and email you all. Perhaps I have intimacy issues, you say? Well, there is that.

Comments

[fufaraw]

"I often felt as a child that the characters in books I enjoyed were my friends, or at least my friendly acquaintances. I was sometimes more interested in them than in actual people whom I knew. This is still the case, except with online people. And I often don't want to know them (you) any better than I do - I like our friendliness to be a bit distant and polite; I have no desire to IM and email you all. Perhaps I have intimacy issues, you say? Well, there is that."

Yes. I understand completely.

I've loved meeting the people I have met, but it's always a conscious gathering of and expenditure of extravert energy that I don't ordinarily have to spend. Wonderful, exhilarating, but also draining. Worth it, definitely, but not too often.