Relevent to two conversations in the last week, and one experience from 2 years ago, this I think, is something worth emptying my head about. As always it's coming straight out, no re-write, so yeah it might not make sense or flow that well.
It's surprising how anonymous the internet can really be. You can type to people, but you only ever take in what they type back. You can see people, but only ever what they want to show you, in a particular light at a particular time and from a particular angle. Should it be any surprise then that people construct an altogether idealistic image of you? Based on apparent 'cold facts' laid out in hyperspace.
This article claims communication is only 7% words. 55% is visual (body language and eyes) and 38% is vocal (pitch, speed, volume, tone of voice). I don't know how they arrived at these figures, but from an 'instinct and experience' point of view, I'd agree with the sentiment that words mean little compared to body language. Should we follow this article as truth, talking online, assuming no webcam or microphone - you're missing out on 93% of what the person on the other end of Teh Interweb is communicating to you.
So what do you do? Well, there's a few key things in my opinion / experience. Assuming something in the first 7% strikes a chord or clicks, and you want to know more, you ramp up the word count. In essence, you set about making up for the missing 93% - it probably isn't deliberate, and at least some of it is subconcious. You still don't see the body language though, so all you have to work on is your own. I guess in some kind of way you project that onto the person behind the screen in place of theirs. Already there's a breakdown, you're basing your responses on what you project, rather than what they do. Already you've started idealising them.
Also, with ramping up the words you pretty soon find out quite a lot about each other, or rather the bits of each other you're comfortable with them knowing. But obviously, the more you talk the more comfortable you get and then the less comfortable things can come out as well. Pretty quickly you can reach an apparent 'old friends' level of how much you know about each other and you haven't even met. You learn a lot about each other, still without knowing them. But there will still be things at least not entirely shared, glossed over a touch, spruced up here and there, again not always deliberate. It's not just communication that is multi-faceted, memories and musings are as well. And memories and musings are selectively extremised, to either really good or really bad but rarely any inbetween. In short, you're projecting yourself. It could all be perfectly true, but there will be a lot of truths, smaller ones, just ignored. The person receiving them can only interpret what they have, their idealism starts to be magnified.
To an extent, the vocal section of communication can be almost covered, as emoticons and quick exchanges of banter sort of give away you're getting on rather well and in an effervescent mood. More deliberate, longer exchanges indicate you're being more serious as to what you are chatting about and trust each other to an extent. Either of those induce some kind of feeling in yourself, and you probably think the other person is experiencing the same. Which isn't normally an incorrect assumption but is worth noting that it all too easily can just be part of what the other person is feeling. Or an exaggeration of what they are feeling - your average person isn't too great about describing exactly how they feel. Tangentially this is is why I guess, that doctor's poke you up the arse with thermometers and poke you were you say it hurts. Furthermore, if you're in a bar or chilling out somewhere with this person discussing these things, chances are they won't be carrying on another conversation with someone else about something entirely different. Rarely the case online as you can be chatting to different people about completely different things and sort of switch your feelings, thoughts and emotions as easily and as often as you change windows. So again, you're only getting some of the story.
From reading this back, it could indicate it can take a while to build the ideal of who you're talking to. Not always true. It's similar to first impressions of someone. You can either click or think they are a dick, when generally they are somewhere in between. Only by finding out more can you even attempt to work that out, but even then you are still building blind, probably closer to the truth but still an ideal.
The key thing is, a lot of people don't see immediately how meeting people online is any different to meeting them in real-life. You can get away with "Yeah, I'd like to see you again sometime - what you doing Friday lunch?" after meeting someone out in town one evening. You could have got your groove on enough just take her back to yours and screw her senseless that night as well, but that's not the angle I'm working here. Throw that lunch-date (or the sexytime offer) at someone after an hour on MSN and the other person will run a mile if they have their head screwed on right. Assuming they aren't looking for a fook-up of course. And what is the difference assuming both occasions you've met, talked and some flirty banter? For me it seems pretty clear it's the communication front. When you're out in town, approach someone and they don't blank you, the pair of you are clearly not averse to getting to know each other in some way. You don't just follow their words, you follow their body language. The fluttery eyes or the sneer. The light touches or the slap. You work out what's going on pretty quickly and get your groove on or move on. On le Net, chances are you're just a couple of bored people with no other intention than just to pass the time. Someone replying to you doesn't mean they want to get to know you, just nothing better to do and not averse to a bit of interaction to go with their browsing. You just can't tell unless they explicitly tell you.
But you never start chatting with someone declaring your intentions. If you did... freaky much? Not to mention an uber conversation killer. However, if you talk with anyone for any amount of time it ought to be discussed, and needs to be done before someone starts investing too much. One of the people I spoke to had regularly role-played with a guy, who after a few months came out the blue with "I love you" when all she thought it of it was fantasy fun. The other has seemingly acquired a lusty and confused e-stalker with little or no effort on her part. Myself... I got something akin to "Are you my boyfriend?" which I could just about fend off, though feeling a touch guilty that I may have led her on, which wasn't my intention. All situations best avoided. All situations you could see coming a mile off in real-life, but somehow be in your blindspot when on the web. And yes, misquoting and decontextualising the immortal words of the fabled philosphers that are Led Zeppelin... it's because of communication breakdown.
So, a vaguely related closing thought. Everyone on the internet is acting out how they see themselves. It is one massive roleplay. Some are pretty bad actors or don't really know themselves. Some read far too much into other people's performances or completely misinterpret them. You get the artistic flamboyant, and wary reserved. Throw all these types into a black & white film with a horribly-dubbed soundtrack, maybe watching it in a storm and you can see that unless you are really tuned in and concentrating it's all to easy to misinterpret things or miss key scenes. It's nobody's fault in particular, you just have to be careful and keep your eyes open.
And myself? I don't think I'm any different, better or worse than anyone else. It's safe to say however honest and open I am online, people reading this blog will only ever see me as the parts of Giles Galbraith I've put online, and even then, only the way they want to see him.
But that's not say there's no hope. That's actually quite cynical and only reflective of a few cases. You can get to know people fairly well, just make sure you know where each other stands before thinking it might be anything more than it is.
*I reserve the right to use 'extremise' as a word - you know exactly what it means even if it has no standard definition.
