That is to say that people like myself and you(I assume) view friendship as a meeting of minds, which doesn't require the component of physical presence to have a certain amount of gravity and meaningfulness, while many others seem to see a face to face friendship as more meaningful than one online.

What I do wish that the latter group of people would appreciate is that severing an online friendship by just disconnecting has every bit of the same amount of hurt feelings and a general sense of self-blame as doing the equivilent with a face-to-face one…in my opinion the former can do more damage because a meeting of minds through electronic means is without safeguards such as watching tv or doing something that is done minus conversation because an online relationship is strictly based on conversation.

I can relate in a sense because I had struck up a reasonably strong friendship with a dude online in the wake of a painful break up. In our early exchanges, I was always encouraging him to suck it up and put himself out there again and find a new chick, if only in a fleeting tryst sort of way. He finally got his shit together and did it and he also became more immersed in his business which was taking off in a big way and it began to seem as though he had been filling-in his need for a meaningful/insightful face-to-face friendship with a woman by having entirely online [a] friendship(s)…which is kind of creepy in a Freudian sense.

The whole experience was extremely surreal for me because I can get “snubbed” and have “snubbed” IRL friendships and not been bothered by it remotely and generally have a very thick skin to start with anyway, but something about him severing our conduit really struck me. Since the thing happened, I have actually set out to mend IRL relationships that I severed abruptly because many people were probably effected as I was by the severing of the online variant.

The clip in one family guy episode where an inmate gets stabbed and says something to the effect of: “OH MY GOD! This is how it feels?! I deserve to be here!” comes to mind. At least I gained an important insight from the whole thing though.

I still am put off by the whole thing as you can tell by my lengthy ramblings.

You're not alone though, sir.

That is to say that people like myself and you(I assume) view friendship as a meeting of minds, which doesn't require the component of physical presence to have a certain amount of gravity and meaningfulness, while many others seem to see a face to face friendship as more meaningful than one online.

What I do wish that the latter group of people would appreciate is that severing an online friendship by just disconnecting has every bit of the same amount of hurt feelings and a general sense of self-blame as doing the equivilent with a face-to-face one…in my opinion the former can do more damage because a meeting of minds through electronic means is without safeguards such as watching tv or doing something that is done minus conversation because an online relationship is strictly based on conversation.

I can relate in a sense because I had struck up a reasonably strong friendship with a dude online in the wake of a painful break up. In our early exchanges, I was always encouraging him to suck it up and put himself out there again and find a new chick, if only in a fleeting tryst sort of way. He finally got his shit together and did it and he also became more immersed in his business which was taking off in a big way and it began to seem as though he had been filling-in his need for a meaningful/insightful face-to-face friendship with a woman by having entirely online [a] friendship(s)…which is kind of creepy in a Freudian sense.

The whole experience was extremely surreal for me because I can get “snubbed” and have “snubbed” IRL friendships and not been bothered by it remotely and generally have a very thick skin to start with anyway, but something about him severing our conduit really struck me. Since the thing happened, I have actually set out to mend IRL relationships that I severed abruptly because many people were probably effected as I was by the severing of the online variant.

The clip in one family guy episode where an inmate gets stabbed and says something to the effect of: “OH MY GOD! This is how it feels?! I deserve to be here!” comes to mind. At least I gained an important insight from the whole thing though.

I still am put off by the whole thing as you can tell by my lengthy ramblings.

You're not alone though, sir.

Somebody really needs to write a book on it already. Or at least do a research project.

And I'm glad you wrote/painted that. Both are awesome.

As one recently dumped o so hard, if I saw a Twitter about anything of that sort, I'd get reactive and the online place we all meet is now the online place we go with our reactions, yes? What are we to do?

Oh Web 2.0.

I feel much better after writing it too. Yay.