Friends: SP v. RL

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Do any of you find it easier to bare your soul here than in real life? Are there things that you can share with us that most of your real-life friends/acquaintances know nothing about?

I'm thinking this might be so because of the anonymity provide by the online forum. Here we are our PDNs and gem/portrait/avatar and whatever we express in words. We can pick and choose our conversations and control what we say. We can assume that other posts are genuine because people most likely wouldn't waste time to post a polite lie. We don't have to look someone else in the eye and see pity or morbid curiosity when all we want is a little sympathy.

So who else finds SP a source of a little solace? A private confessional, as it were?

 

I can speak to my friends about almost anything. I know however, which friends are going to take a more mature approach to what'd I have to say, but you're right. The screen sure makes it feel "safe" somehow here on the net. Personally, I still need to know(or rather trust) a person online before blabbing on about stuff.

 

Funny, I was considering posting pretty much the same question. I have been trying to get rid of my so called RL friends. They all want something from you, here it's just neutral.

 

My real life friends are well chosen and i trust them with my life. I do talk to them about more issues than i talk in here but i never and i mean never hide myself behind avatars or gems or a screen. What you see here is me and noone else it is the same face i show to my real life.

I believe that always interaction with other people is always a give/take situation. One must simply decide what he trades with other people. Although distance may make things safer and less demanding there is always a need (even just communication) and there is always an answer to that need

 

There is one little source of frustration that I don't have RL friends to vent about ... the wife (as if you couldn't guess). She really isn't that bad, indeed this past week has been wonderful! Sometimes, however, things just build up and I need to get them off my chest. I don't want to talk to RL friends about this, because I don't want them looking down on her, or passing the rumors around. This is a safe place to vent, and sometimes a real good SP friend will PM me a *hug* when things are really bad.

On the one-in-a-million my wife decides to post here again (she doesn't hardly touch the computer since the baby was born so that's safe), or one of my RL friends decides to become an SP addict ... I'm hosed.

 

I don't think I'd say "private confessional" - I wouldn't say anything to anyone here that I'd hesitate to say to a real-life friend - but I do find my social needs are pretty well met here. I'm extremely introverted and it takes me many years to form a friendship, which means, given how often I move from country to country, that I don't have too many friends. Of my three lifelong friends, one is has been committed to a psychiatric hospital and our "conversations" consist of her shrieking about Satan and me trying to comb the tangles out of her hair. The second, my best friend since I was 10 years old, has been a Missing Person since she disappeared on a blind date three years ago. And the third lives thousands of miles away and doesn't have e-mail. So my RL social life these days consists mostly of playing with my husband. Most of the people I meet that I like enough to have coffee with are guys, and as a married woman I don't socialise alone with men. Most of the women I meet are more interested in shoes and kids than playing computer games or debating political issues and conversation doesn't go very far. SP is perfect - lots of interesting, clever people of both genders to make conversation with.

 

Fortunately or unfortunately...I'm like this IRL too!

 

Well most of my RL "friends" (hmm actually all of them) have the intelligence of a rock.
Their hobbies include such things as: Tear Down The Roof and Destroy The Carpet.

Go figure

 

RL friends? Frosty, BlackCat, sometimes Teensabre

on here, people who think I'm not a stupid little girl with no life, I can consider as friends.

on the online game I play, I'm almost... popular, I have a few people that like me a lot, and the rest talk to me and like me. A couple are a bit overboard, like asking me to move to America and stuff, but they're crazy

Yet I never tell anyone everything, there have been a few times I've worried people will discover things I try to keep hidden. There are things I have told people before and they ignore me, hate me, so I keep things away. People think they know me, I suppose my mother and grandmother and perhaps BlackCats mother and himself, know the most about me, but there are still things I keep well hidden.

 

SP is my own personal priest, baby!

But seriously, I do like to write when I'm down (which, compared to many other people, is hardly ever) so SP is a good vent for me. My RL friends are great, but I'm very unapproachable due to my bizarre and extremely outgoing personality.

 

I think that SP wins. In RL I have only one friend, whom I can trust, but here I can talk about just anything. Nearly anything.

 

RL friends? Please! My only good RL frioends live a loong way from here, and can't really use the internet.

I have said it several times before, and I will say it now: If not for SP, I wouldn't be here today. I would have killed myself, or perhaps someone else, if not for the wonderful friends I have gained here.... To my SP friends I tell things no one else knows... SP is my life.

Sad, is it not?

 

I would say RL friends win. But there are things I'd tell one group but not the other. I wouldn't tell people on here that I had a fight with my geography teacher today because no one would really care, but then saying that, I don't talk to my friends about D&D because most of them are so narrow minded christains that they think it's evil because there are other gods and magic

I think I used the word because a few to many times in that post.

 

Though I think I dare to say anything here on the boards about my private life, I still think my RL friends have won. In my not-so-very-humble opinion, 1% help is better than 100% sympathy.
People can lie about how they feel for you. Their acts are the sign of real friendship.

Since I don't have any single reason to think you people would lie to me here on the boards,I love to hear your words of wisdom and compassion. And sometimes it's better to get some advice of people you don't actually know.

I got plenty of good friends. I can tell them anything and I do so. That doesn't mean I won't tell SP. I got nothing to loose, so why should I remain silent on the boards. It's just that my RL-friends have a better opportunity to show their friendship with real life acts, whether it's just being there at my father's burial, or sitting just next to me saying nothing, or playing (let's say) a game of soccer.

 

Frankly, I do not care so much for SP or RL friends (although I have a cadre of both ).

 

SP is a good place to rant and rave and talk nerdy talk. No one in real life seems to appreciate these things

 

You cannot compare RL ot SP. Your SP friends you will likely never meet, then it's very easy to say things to them because it doesn't have any consecvences(sp?). Your RL friends know you more than yourself at sometimes. They're closely related to you in severe ways, while SP friends is only via a computer.
You should ask yourself: When would you begin to cry. When a close SP dies in a car accident or a good RL friend?

 

I was thinking about this the other day. People often make a difference between 'RL' friends and people they know at SP. This term 'real-life' always makes me laugh, for SP has become a part of my life (as it has became a part of others), and this is very real. SP is a part of my 'real' life and if I had any friends here, they would be 'real-life' friends.

Secondly, I find it hard to imagine that people would call other people they met on SP, friends. Basically, you don't know much about this person and, you probably never met this person. A term like online-acquaintances would probably fit better, but this is probably also my opinion, because even in 'real-life' (there is that stupid term again, but I will use it, so everybody knows what I mean) I don't often call someone a friend.

I don't feel comfortable telling the SP members personal things. I often see that people tell all about themselves, and there only has to be one lunatic who can destroy your life with some of the info people gave.
I would never give my last name here. In one of those 'what's your real name'-threads, I just picked a random person who stated his last name and within minutes, I had his adress, wife's name, and if I was willing to pay a few dollars, I also could get all the bank information about this person.
As for my friends, I can tell them everything, and things I wouldn't tell them, I would never tell to strangers.

 

One of my "RL" friends or one of my SP friends?

I'd cry for the SP one.

See my lack of life.

*hugs all her friends here and everyone else for the good meassure*