Internet forums, like this one, have created a completely new level of communication even on psychological aspect. The forums have created internet personalities. This means that we all play a role behind our more or less anonymous and "faceless" nicks and this role in some cases doesn't correlate even slighlty the real and natural personality, the one that you face on the "real life" face-to-face communication.
The reasons a internet role is formed are:
1. It's easy to be excentric and open on a forum board. This effectively eliminates the cons of shyness. It's easier for people to join a discussions and say things one otherwise wouldn't dare on a face-to-face situation.
2. The method of communication is simple text. In face-to-face communication you'll usually speak and in addition to the speech the information is transmitted by bodylanguage, tone of voice, etc. On forums everyone are on the same line.
We have brilliant forum here. We have bizarre personalities here and the regular visitors have become friends over the time. This is all thanks to the anonymous communication internet offers. It believe that some of us wouldn't have become firends if we would have met in "real life". Our internet personalities have become friends and I hope that someday I meet at least some of my buddies in real life too. At the moment I have only met Matsa briefly when he got thrown out from a gig we were supposed to meet. Hoho.
|