A friend has been trying to get me to be more outgoing and talk to people more, saying I have a great personality but most people don't get to see it because I hold it in and act blank/neutral until I've known someone for a long time. I've told her that if & when I'm not talking to people it's just because we don't have anything to talk about, and that's beyond my control. But I don't think she really gets what I meant, because she reacts like finding something to talk about (or maybe just talking about nothing) is extremely simple & easy. So I sent her a message on FaceBook about forums and the kinds of conversations I'm used to having on them. At that moment, I had several other browser tabs open, and I just listed the subjects of the threads and journal articles in those tabs, which were all intellectual stuff that's interesting to me but dull to most other people, just like some other conversation topics that seem pretty popular among other people are dull to me.
That got me thinking about other related differences between online and offline interactions. For one thing, in the real world there's no list of conversations to choose from, on which you might just skip 95% of them and the remaining 5% can still take up hours; there's just whatever you and the few people immediately around you come up with on the spot. Also, online posts can just about be any length, and respond to any number of points from other participants all in one post, in any level of depth & detail, without interruption... whereas the real world's quicker back-&-forth pace dictates a less thorough, more surface-skimming style.
And while I was thinking about the differences and how to tell someone who's not like me about my preferences, it occurred to me that, instead of those preferences causing me to spend my time where I spend it, it could be the other way around or both in a positive feedback: maybe the more time I spend on forums, the more it affects my preferences, making me accustomed to the online world and distancing me from people offline.
Is that anyone else's experience here? Have there been any psychological studies showing such an effect among forum users in general?
That got me thinking about other related differences between online and offline interactions. For one thing, in the real world there's no list of conversations to choose from, on which you might just skip 95% of them and the remaining 5% can still take up hours; there's just whatever you and the few people immediately around you come up with on the spot. Also, online posts can just about be any length, and respond to any number of points from other participants all in one post, in any level of depth & detail, without interruption... whereas the real world's quicker back-&-forth pace dictates a less thorough, more surface-skimming style.
And while I was thinking about the differences and how to tell someone who's not like me about my preferences, it occurred to me that, instead of those preferences causing me to spend my time where I spend it, it could be the other way around or both in a positive feedback: maybe the more time I spend on forums, the more it affects my preferences, making me accustomed to the online world and distancing me from people offline.
Is that anyone else's experience here? Have there been any psychological studies showing such an effect among forum users in general?
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=265053&goto=newpost
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