Filling the void online.

Its ironic having to post this on a message board. But IMHO, "online friends" are almost certainly bound to be less accepting of you than RL friends.

As I posted earlier, online relationships lack most of the visual cues we depend upon to telegraph someone's honesty and emotional state. Online, we are the sum of our ideas and our expression of them. I think that our acceptance or rejection over an idea we espouse is mitigated in RL by all the other things we bring to a relationship.

Furthermore, many of us only post when we're feeling well enough to do so. Therefore the kind of good-will you earn by supporting others when they're down may be mitigated by them removing themself when they're down.

There are so many reasons why we can't truly be "known" online the way we are in RL.

I was recently reading the book The Woman Who Can't Forget. Its author talks about the role that memory shapes in molding our personalities. But she warns that reminiscence can turn into rumination. If we spend too much time in what might've been, we lose hold on what is.

Dante