I would guess that regardless of how open minded all of us are, in the ‘real’ world, many of our best online friends would have never become our friends at all, even if they were in our local environment. The reason is that differences in gender, age, style, education, ethnicity, and attractiveness lead to motivations to either encounter or avoid an individual based on their appearance, and somewhat even on superficial interaction with the individual. These things are either less of a concern or not a concern at all in online forums.

Is this evidence that in the ‘real’ world, people do not try hard enough to relate to others more deeply that they perceive as different, annoying, or unattractive, or is this evidence that ‘real’ world relationships are overrated?

Actually, I'd say that real-world relationships have become underrated.

I agree with Dray.

Example: an open-minded person.

So, in the real world. Just like you said, as much open-minded as one can be, absolutely no person enters in contact with everyone around them. Gender, age, social status, everything plays a role in who you'll propositally make contact to. So, any relation that you might end up having with 'different' people (old, richer/poorer, etc) will have some coincidential feel to it. Like, for instance, in a school classroom: it is a flaring coincidence that all those very different people end up having to share half their time together.
If you don't have prejudices towards physical appearance, if you like a person (psychologically) you might end up having a relation. That is the same that happens online, only you had to meet the person personally first, which was probably the result of a coincidence.

What I'm trying to say is that this real-life coincidence is equivalent to online coincidences. It is a flaring coincidence that, for instance, the Mag has the members that it has; and thus, they end up having relations that started because of this coincidence.

And that's my opinion: as long as you do not have prejudices towards physical appearances (which is a whole different debate), the way unusual relations get to start does not differ very much from one environment to another.

Hope I could pass that opinion clearly enough ^^

The thing I feel strongly about is being able to see a person I have some sort of relationship with. You have a deeper connection with them that way. Strictly online friends are fun to have to talk about stuff, but it's too hard to find a real, valuable relationship online. Like, I have no best friends that I met over the computer. I choose real friends over online friends. Why? I have a real connection with the people I know in person.

The gravity of situations is much higher in person as well. Take me and my best friend for example. Online, I can talk endlessly and have no problem saying anything. But when I talk in person, it's harder because there's more emphasis, and saying the wrong thing can't hurt more. Because how you say something carries the weight of the words. If an online friend told me that they hated me online, 99% of the time, it's no big thing. If a friend I knew from home told me that they hated me, I'd feel terrible. So, you can see that 'real' relationships are severely underrated.

@The Gnasher (and sort of to everyone else)

Traditional society allows for deeper connections to form between individuals that are ‘forced’ together in a school classroom for example because the classroom has age (and sometimes gender) in common. There seems to be little concern in traditional society that the connections formed between people of different interests might actually be negative.

Traditional society, however, often fails to welcome deeper connections between individuals with common interests when age (and sometimes gender) is different. There seems to be a concern in traditional society that the connections formed between people of different ages (and sometimes gender) is actually negative.

Online forums in which people have common interests are evidence that people of different ages and genders can have meaningful relationships. Now that this evidence is known, can or should this ever translate into the ‘real’ world?

It seems like the 37 year old urban female executive and the 18 year old rural male agriculture major might be able to develop a deeper connection (whether it be friendship, romantic, or other) once they realize they have RPG Maker in common as an icebreaker, but they’ll never ‘realize’ this as both will think (due to traditional reinforcement) that this kind of relationship is only appropriate online, so they will continue to walk by each other everyday, even though both were in the same line at the same Best Buy buying the same copy of Final Fantasy XII and both saw each other doing it.

Is this really OK!?

Do you see what I mean?

It's going to be a personal thing. Some girls will go for the older men, and vice versa. Sometimes people date closer in age. It doesn't really matter. What I think matters is the link between you and the other person, though age is a factor in my pickings. Older women tend to want to dominate a relationship, friendship or otherwise, simply because they have age advantage and want to use that against younger men to try and control them.

I can kind of see where Bo is coming from. For example, Kratos. You say you have hard time opening up to people around where you live, right? If that doesn't hold the same in the forums here, then what Bo says holds truth.

And to futher that. I have another example. If BQ is as really as young as she is, someone like me who is 24, would probably be considered a pedophial for casually hanging out with her as I do in the threads. So the fact is, I probably wouldn't have a friendly relationship with her if we saw each other IRL and never new the Mag.

I see his point. I'm just saying, if you do have a friendship or relationship in real life, it's much more involved than anything you have on the internet. Not saying that it is hard to open up on the internet, just saying that there will be more spark in the relationship if you know them personally.

The essential flaw with what you've proposed so far, Bo, is that you've merely debouched popular convention and supplanted it with more isolate conventions.

Yes, it is true, all of the previously specified characteristics are held in continual play by those whom operate within the assaulted convention, though it is also just as true that equally numerous specifications exist for human interaction on the internet. The mag is essentially just another school classroom where various prejudices and viewpoints align or malalign. A convention, after all, in this context, is merely a perspective with which something is viewed, and, seeing as no convention could possibly view more of 'totality' than another, all conventions will come with prejudices presupposed and enacted.
What of the appellations 'emo', 'hacker', 'fangirl', etc?

What you've done is given two analogous conventions and then, instead of doing what analogies are typically used for in asserting something and proving them similar, you've tried to prove how they're disimilar, when they're already by nature roughly similar.

I would be willing to bet that each of you has passed up just as many potentially wonderful relationships on the internet as you have in real life.
It's how not being omniscient works, not a matter of whether the medium for communication is air or volts and wires.

*shrug*
That's my take on it.

I would be willing to bet that you're wrong in my case. I'm a recluse in real life.

*chuckles*
To rephrase for the sake of exactness, then: I would be willing to bet there is equal potential for passing up wonderful relationships between the two conventions.
Being a recluse myself, on the internet as well since I only go to three sites regularly, it was certainly more of a general statement, I think, though I have a habit of expressing my generalities in too certain terms.

Did you see my original question to start the topic?




For the sake of exactness, I am not trying to ‘prove’ anything.

We are in apparent agreement about the nature of conventions.

We are in apparent disagreement about ‘analogous’ conventions. Things (including conventions) are ‘analogous’ when there is BOTH an apparent similarity AND an actual distinction otherwise they would be the same thing (in our example, it would be a single convention.)

The similarity using your emphasis is that the Mag is essentially a school classroom. The distinction is that unlike a school classroom, the Mag has 24 year old Lantis ‘relating’ to young girl BQ and 34 year old Anonymous Bo as a member of the class.

Using this example in the ‘real’ world where Lantis and BQ would be ‘prevented’ by society, parents, guilt, or otherwise from having a friendly relationship, addresses that maybe the success of online friendships or relationships is indicative of the potential for the success of nontraditional friendships and relationships in the real world or if that kind of relationship is impossible in the real world, then the success of the online relationship may be an indication that real world relationships are overrated (as I addressed in my original question) and thus there is more to be said about ‘potentially wonderful relationships’ in the online community without a sense of loss of real world relationships.

Are we in disagreement about something?

In my previous post, I did mean to include gender/age differences. You can very much develop a succesful relation to someone completely older and/or of the opposite gender, though it would probably only occur if the two of you met through some sort of coincidence.

So, I keep my position.

Why do you think you can 'very much develop a successful relationship to someone completley older'? Have you had successful relationships with someone completely older and if so, why don't you try to have relationships with older people more often instead of by coincidence?

Yes. I have succesful relations with people from 1 to 40 years older than me, because the only thing I look for in a casual relation is an interesting person to relate to.
The reason why I don't actively look for older people to relate to is simply because they are scarse in my everyday environment, and I don't have nor the will nor the time to go look for them in another environments. I have other things to worry about than to go out looking for relations, afterall. Relations come naturally and with time.

You're Brazilian, right? Maybe this comes more naturally in Brazil, but in the US people seem to be big about generational differences and 'roles'.

What if you are brought together through one of those coincidences?
My most best environment in terms of people variety is capoeira class, because there you can find anyone, from 11 to 50 years old. That's made me many friendships with a lot of different people.
I'm sure something like that exists in the USA as well; if nothing else, at least in the church you get to get in contact with many different people.
If the two people involved find each other at least interesting, it just takes a little bit of good will from both sides to start a relation. It's not that hard.

Are you saying that there's a generalized prejudice towards different society roles, age, etc. in a relation?

As I say, "I don't believe in coincidences."

The only place in the US that you have a group of 11 to 50 year olds is (yes) at church, or at some country bars in Indiana.

It has been my experience that teens and middle-aged people don’t often look at each other as friends let alone in a dating relationship.

I know that there is the occasional close friend that is older or younger, but I want to see more of an integrated society in which I could walk into a restaurant, see multiple combinations of teens, thirty year olds, 50 year olds of both genders and all ethnicities. Sitting down, hanging out and COMMUNICATING, without them being blood relationships. This is often how it is online, but in the real world, if you actually see this, your witnessing several individual families.