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I know a whole bunch of the London crowd IRL, and a few others (Brighton, Scotland and Southampton, mainly, but who visit London a lot, and I met a few of the New Yorkers too- oh, and I almost forgot, I'm married to a 'lither from Massachusetts, and I used to live with one of the Canadian B'lith crowd). With the exception of the New Yorkers, they're all people I've met because they've come to London, as I don't travel much other than to go to the pub.
I didn't really know any of them before, though on meeting some it turned out that I had at least spoken to quite a few of them prior to my joining Barbelith, largely because I used to work in a certain large comic shop where my habit of making idle chat with customers was a real fucker for my bosses.
There are also a few very good real-life friends of mine who have joined since- I think in their case, because I know them so well, I read their posts in "their voices", and have no difficulty reconciling the two.
There are also a great many 'lithers who I'd LOVE to meet one day, but probably never will. Not sure if that makes me sad or adds to the mysterious fun, really.
In some cases knowing them in real life makes a difference to using the board, in others it doesn't. I think a lot of it's to do with the difference between the real-life person and the online persona- if a suit's so different (or, at least, if my READING of it's so different) from how its inhabitor conducts themselves in real life, I tend to think of them as two separate entities. Some people post exactly how they speak, some are grumpier online, some discuss different subjects online than they would down the pub...
Actually, something else has occurred to me. Considering that most of the time when I socialise with ANYONE (meatspace 'lithers obviously being included in that- where's our Venn Diagrams forum, eh?) there's alcohol involved, there's probably, on average, more sobriety in people's posts than there is in their real conversations with me. |
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