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Online Friends?

Started by Constance, October 19, 2008, 04:17:34 PM

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Constance

Quote from: Nero on October 20, 2008, 01:35:26 PM
Quote from: Shades O'Grey on October 20, 2008, 01:25:28 PM
So, I'm not nuts if an online friend posts something hurtfull and I feel hurt by it. Right?

of course not. i'm ashamed to have done just that (which primary purpose was to bait and challenge a loved one. also something i'm not proud of but in the process i baited far more people than said loved one and ended up offending all involved to boot) and hope i am the only one who has made you feel this way lately.  :embarrassed:
I hesitated before joining this message board for fear it would be like previous message board experiences: people who I thought seemed friendly at first would then change. This has happened at nearly every message board I've ever registered at. In fact, the only one I can think of where it didn't happen was a bicycling forum where I posted a question for purely mechanical advice.

Any board that deals with anything remotely social topics (religion, sex, politics, even bicycling) I've had really nasty encounters with truly unfriendly people. It seems that the anonimity of the web emboldens people to be excessively rude. I'm guessing this because the encounters are not face-to-face, there's little fear of reprisal.

To be honest, most of my message board experiences have been positive. For some reason, the bad bits seem to stay with me.

cindybc

QuoteI've become close friends with a few people who I met online, some of whom I eventually ended up meeting in person. Yes, people can invent fictions, both on or off line, however if you read between the lines, you can usually figure if someone has an agenda.
Zythyra

I agree, I have met four individuals from different message boards, two from this one, one is a friend and one I got married to.

You can tell when you have a certain individual who is faking it, but then one must keep in mind that there also those who come to this group shy, scared and naive about the entire transgender thing.

Some folks are lonely and in search of company so they make up a fantasy life to attract attention and then there are also those who seek attention. I think once one has been on these forums long enough you can tell the difference between the apples and the oranges and if the oranges are not hurting anyone just let them be.

My arms are open for anyone until I get slapped on the cheek and then I will most likely just recoil away and go like my wounds and say nothing in return. But I am always open for anyone I love every one, and some I feel close to, but always be prepared for the slap on the cheek deal.

Cindy 
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Sephirah

Intuition goes a long way towards discerning people's true intentions. I have found that I'm rarely wrong if I go with my instincts. For lack of a better term, I can 'read' people, on and offline.

That being said, there are very genuine, warm, caring people online... as there are offline. A friend through this medium, in my opinion, is no less a friend than through any other medium. And the relative anonymity, rather than obscuring someone, can often make it easy to strip away all the pretence and bravado, and see a person for who they are purely becuase they have fewer inhibitions about baring their soul to you. :)
Natura nihil frustra facit.

"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." ~ Buddha.

If you're dealing with self esteem issues, maybe click here. There may be something you find useful. :)
Above all... remember: you are beautiful, you are valuable, and you have a shining spark of magnificence within you. Don't let anyone take that from you. Embrace who you are. <3
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Kaitlyn

Quote from: Shades O'Grey on October 19, 2008, 04:17:34 PM
Is it really possible to have "friends" online? Is it really possilbe to consider people one has only encountered online to be real friends?

For all I know, the members of Susans or any other message board are no more than personsas created for the online world. To be fair, the same could be said of me. I'm using a pseudonym and my avatar is some strange run. Anyone else here could just as eaily ask, "Is the persona presented by the user Shades O'Grey really representative of the person who created that member profile?

Thoughts, anyone?


Psychologically speaking, even if you meet someone in person, you're still dealing with a created persona.  Some people behave very differently in private than they do in public - and that's just an extreme example.  We all adopt different personas for different situations.  Sometimes there's a problem with our ability to switch between them, and we get a person with dissociative identity disorder - multiple personalities.  Sometimes a person won't have any persona for a given situation, and you get... something else, like me.  I think Keira mentioned she had that problem at one point, too.
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
— Plutarch
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cindybc

Intuition! But that is for sure, even though a lot of people think it's a bunch of crap their is this inner sensory receptor that is tuned in to energy pulsation that oscillates at a much higher vibrational level then what the normal level detected by most, analogous to the sensitive radar hearing of a bat compared to the human ear. Not that they can't tune in to this vibrational level, they could if they were aware of it. But anyway what people believe or don't beleive is irrelevant because these types of phenomena that our minds are tuned into happens whether the comity of they believe it or not, and has been happening since primitive times. Actually the primitive peoples were even more evolved or tuned in with these gifts then we are today, the harmonics of nature.

Yea I use to get my lumps when I was a kid just for doing exactly that, seeing sensing and knowing things about others that realy made them resent the fact that someone else who was a stranger to their private life knew about their inner most thoughts and secrets as well as they did. That kid is freaky, she shouldn't know about all that stuff about me. People who are ignorant, fear the unknown.  So yes this sensitivity or intuition works equally as well with hand writing, actually better with hand writing, but it also works quite as well with the type written word as well. 

And yes one who is so gifted can also tune in on any given person out there in the outside world as well. These sensitivities or gifts grow as the years go by. Feeling peoples' intents, feelings, and thoughts from their writing, or in person, I have no way of knowing how many people can actually do that, but one thing I do know, is there certainly are more around then just Leiandra and I around. There are many more like us out there, they are just not so obvious to detect or tell apart from the rest of the populace.

About reading peoples thoughts and feeling whether in the outside world or the cyber world is like reading someones horoscope without the cards. If you tell them it will tend to get people rather skittish and frightened and frightened people may not react exactly in a kind way. There is so much ignorance out there from people who don't want to understand or they fear of the unknown which keeps them hiding under their rocks like a bunch of hermit crabs hiding from the nasty Martian invasion. Anyway I only read what's on the surface and only go deeper only when I feel there is a good reason to do so.  It is certainly an asset for certain jobs where intuition could be the order of the day. Also could be used as a self preservation tool, like feeling the energy around me when walking about where there is a lot of people, especially when I find myself in unfamiliar territory. I call this turning the radars on.

Cindy
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Constance

I hesitate to trust my intuition. Maybe I'm just not that attuned to it, but the good or bad "vibes" I feel I get from people are often the opposite of reality. I'll think I'm getting good vibes from someone, only to get betrayed, and vice versa.

cindybc

Hi O'Grey there are those who are aware of our sensitivities in picking up other peoples energies and they are quite capable to use that very ability to their own gain, these are called **deceivers or users** for what ever their reason might be, enough of them out there.

Cindy
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Godot

Online friends are the only friends I can really make at this time. I'm home schooled so I don't have a chance to make that many friends much but I have people around my age at Church to talk with but I can't really be "myself" there or go by the name I want to go by. I believe a friend can be either offline or online. I just wish I could find a chat room that had some decent people to chat with
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sd

I have met some really great people online, who have done everything a friend offline would do, short of actually going someplace together, and even that can change if you go into certain virtual worlds online.

Yes sometimes they do just fade away, but that is no different than someone moving away in real life, how many times have friends moved and you just slowly lost touch or grew apart. Online things happen a  bit faster, but the friendships are every bit as genuine as real life.

Can people lie about what they are? Yes, but usually the truth comes out eventually. If it doesn't is it a lie? They are the person you like, regardless if that is how they are in the real world. If you never meet them in the real world, how do you n=know they are not truthful? You take people as they are, online and offline.


People can say all they want about online vs. offline, truth is, each has it's own benefits and drawbacks but they both can be just as important.
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