Musings

This is going to be a fairly disjointed post, so bear with me. Last night, I caught myself thinking a lot about online relationships. Not dating sites, but friendships, communities, message boards, stuff like that. What is it about these relationships that make them so prone to the dreaded 'D' word, Drama?

Is it that people see these as 'disposable' friendships? They don't put the effort into creating or maintaining the relationship, so that some occurrence, were it to happen in meat-space would be talked over and hopefully resolved, causes the entire group or community to descend into 'he said, she said, you're mean, you lie, neener-neener'. And bystanders, who may not have been involved in the original disagreement, end up tossed willy-nilly by the electronic storm, damaging relationships that otherwise had no connection to the original.

Is it the anonymity of the bits and bites and pixels that make us think it's ok to act this way? I have an online business. I like to think that how I portray myself online, no matter which community, message board or chat room I'm in, is as close to the meat-me as possible. But look at all the spammers and scammers out there, who see an opportunity for a 'good deal' and swoop in for the kill.

Maybe I'll come up with some coherent thoughts to update this post with, but I'll leave it here for now. Just know that if you're talking to me online, you're getting the real me. No frosting, no fluff, just me. And I'm sorry if my being me bothers you, but my meat-space friends love me for who I am, so I see no reason to create a fake me for online use.

Unless I'm playing LOTRO, but that's a horse of a different color.