“Online lives are phantasmagorical.”

What would that conversation have looked like if we had been face to face?  He would have seen my eyebrow arch, a rueful smile curve my lips, a fleeting look of exasperation in my eyes.

This is my real life. The only distinction I make is the one above– F2F or not?

CAN people have fantasy lives, played out on the digital plane?  Oh absolutely. But are all online interactions naturally suspect?  No…. not all of them.  Just as in our physical life. It doesn’t matter whether Eddy Haskell compliments here or there, I know the value of the currency.

The lines started to blur for me almost immediately when I ventured online, some 15 years ago. Friends I made then– Billy in Florida, Jenny in Vernon, Karen (and her mom) in Texas–are still friends, and in some cases we have spent time F2F as well. No matter, they are no more or less real to me, important to me, treasured as “real” friends.

I don’t think it’s the interface that is the problem, I think it is the human condition. To want to be where we want to be, even if we need to be somewhere else. That’s the reality of the physical life (glaring hard at me on this Monday morning). The online life lets us be physically where we need to be, and also where we want to be. We trade the physical cues for immediacy of communication.

You can look at it as dividing your energies, or as multiplying your connections. You decide where your real life is lived.