Quote:
Originally Posted by whatever
- I've generally found it more difficult to interact here than in real life since I rely heavily on body language and reading another person when communicating- here you can't inflect words with a certain tone or see how the other person is holding thier hands- I do think that a lot of disagreements and spats would be avoided if we could see and hear each other instead of just reading what was typed (and conversely, a lot of spats and disagreements would start when people realized what was written between the lines!  ) |
This is very interesting to me because I find it so much easier to interact here than in real life. When I communicate in RL, I see body language and other physical elements as impediments to my message instead of enhancements of it. Perhaps that is because I am not the master of my physical self. I enjoy the forum because I'm able to be precise in my language and say exactly what I want to say without fear of misinterpretation. No one here is going to form a false impression of what I think because I am l holding my face a certain way or standing in a certain pose. I feel like this setting allows me to present the purest distilled essence of who I am.
Like others, I also find the diminished importance of age, looks and the like to be fascinating. But one aspect of it that I find particularly interesting is that it's possible to form a fondness or desire for someone that would be entirely inappropriate in real life. It makes me wonder if a meeting of the minds makes such distinctions unimportant, or if rather the lack of full disclosure makes personal interactions on the forum a dangerous minefield.