I've been thinking about people and being crazy. I also wonder if someone is truly crazy, wouldn't they want to try and hide that when on a forum, since in real life if everyone he or she knew viewed him or her as crazy would get tiring. I mean wouldn't someone like that might want a break? sorry this is probably not coherent I'm still on my first cup of coffee.
No I know what you mean. I once met a woman who I got to know online - online she seemed to be the most sweet, kind, gentle thing that wouldn't harm a soul. To hear her talk you'd have thought she was some martyr that put up with rubbish from everyone because she was so empathic and caring.
In reality, it turned out she was bone fucking idle, made a mess all the time in her house and never cleaned up after herself or pulled her weight either with work or bills, which drove her housemates crazy and made them often yell at her. She spent most of her time in her room on the internet 'caring' about people she never met, but in RL she was a total basket case. She'd say the most rude and hurtful things to people and then burst into tears and storm off, then she'd come back later as though nothing happened. If you tried to get an explanation out of her she'd say she didn't want to talk about it and she'd got through it in her head now and it was 'over', yet she'd left the other person spinning, confused and frightened and didn't think she even owed them an explanation as to why she exploded at them just cos they asked her if she wanted milk in her coffee or something similarly mundane.
But by the same token, I've met quite a lot of people off the internet and most of them have turned out to be just as they were online.
As for my motivations... well, primarily if I meet people online then I do really want to make RL friends of them. I don't really get that much satisfaction out of friendships that stay online, where the other person won't meet up. I can understand it if a) they live very far away or b) we haven't known each other long online. But when they live fairly close by me and we've been chatting and stuff for months, I can't understand why they sometimes still won't meet up for coffee or lunch or whatever, even bring a friend or whatever if they need to, but why just keep refusing? I can imagine several reasons why they might, but I feel quite impatient all the same and frustrated that the friendship has to be limited this way.
I'm never against meeting up with people in RL that I meet online, if the distance is realistic then I'm happy to do it ASAP. So part of the motive for me is to make real friends.
talking about commitment levels being questionable because of the ease of 'switching off' from internet friends... well. It's not as if there's anything stopping people switching off from RL friends either is it? I've been cut dead by a couple in my time, and I've cut a few dead myself in RL. I know it happens all the time, that people feel they've been pushed too far or whatever by someone in RL and they feel they've had enough, or even people just think you're too boring or whatever, and they start ignoring your calls, pretending to be out when you visit, blanking you basically.
The commitment in RL comes where even though you have the option of cutting the person off, you choose not to. Online, if I've given you my e-mail address and chat nickname or whatever, my personal home address and phone number so you can write and phone, then it's no different than in RL - I choose not to cut you off, I choose not to change my e-mail address or block you from my MSN, even though sometimes we might disagree or whatever.
There are some online friends I have who live just too far away for me to meet them face to face, but that doesn't mean I don't still wish I could, and sincerely want to. And if I'm ever in their part of the world then I will, and sometimes I'll even go there just to meet them, depending again on what sort of expense we're talking about here.
Where I have to accept, like on this forum, that I'm never going to meet most of the people, then that still doesn't mean I don't sincerely feel some kind of bond with some of them. Again that's no different than being in any RL community. You can go to a church, say, for years, where 200 people go every Sunday, but it's rare I'd say that anyone would genuinely feel attached and bonded with all 200. You have your friends you bond with and then the rest that you kinda care about but wouldn't miss too much if they went to another church.
I don't think there's any particular pattern so to speak, to be able to say "people online do this or that which people in RL don't do" or "people online do this because of XYZ" or whatever. i think the quality of relationship and behaviour and stuff online is completely dependent on the individuals, just like in RL.
I try to be there as much as I can for my online friends and don't prioritize my RL friends over them. They're all real people and deserve to be treated accordingly. If an online friend e-mails me and it's something even vaguely important I'll respond straight away, and I've often prioritized it over RL tasks. I've made a RL friend sit and wait while I answered an e-mail from an online friend because the RL friend and I were just talking about football whilst the online friend is asking for help with something. If they're on a tricky time zone then I schedule times when we can chat still or phone each other, always preferring to phone if possible. I send them postcards when I go on vacation or little gifts that just remind me of them. I am JUST as committed and sincere in online friendships as I am in RL, which is very much so.