write.as/jonbeckett

I have noticed a growing divide between those who's relationships with others predominantly exist among friends, family, and associates they meet in every day life, and those who'srelationships are predominantly forged in communities on the internet.

It often seems that the every-day group look down on the internet group. Recounting anecdotes we have read online often falls on deaf ears – you might even go as far as saying the people we have met, and the stories they have shared were in some sense fictional. It doesn't help that communities on the internet are often labelled by print media as “virtual”;
Virtual :not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so.
Are the people telling stories at Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, and the various other web based communities not real people then? Do they not exist? Are their photos imaginary? Did their stories never happen?

It strikes me that those who live outside the realm of the internet have difficulty imagining that we might forge our closest friendships with people we maynever meet.The abstraction of the internet allows for confidences to be shared, burdens to be lifted, prejudices to be dropped, and cultural boundaries to be erased.

Very few people that I meet in day-to-day life know that I write a blog. Those that do have almost universally seen it as a curiousity for a few moments – quietly markingme out as an eccentric, and a bit odd while doing so.

“Why would you want to write about your day for others to read?”

“What's the point?”

What's the point in breathing? What's the point of getting up on a morning? What's the point of anything at all? For those of us that write about our life, hopes, ideas, and dreams on the internet, there are rarely reasons. We just do. And because we “just do”, we are surrounded by an enormous community of real people, sharing real moments of real lives. We follow each other's adventures, we ask after each other, we send word to each other.

Most relationships we forge in day-to-day lifeare a product of circumstance – the children in our class at school, the people in our year at college, the people we work with, the people that live close by, the staff of stores we visit regularly, the parents ofother children in our children's schools. The relationships we forge on the internet are different – we are entirely responsible for seeking each other out. The places we found each other – Tumblr, Wordpress, LiveJournal, or wherever – are not important – they are the virtual constructs. The people however – the people are very, very real.