Online friends 2

[msagara]

I want to thank everyone for answering the last question; I started to post replies, and as usual, ran out of space, so I'm spilling things over into a second post.

I should make clear, here, that I don't consider it impossible to have online friends -- only that, as athenais said, I don't think it can achieve the multiple layers I look for in a close friendship. It has to go "live" at some point or it remains limited.

I also agree with whatemluv said (and thought it a very elegant way of stating same) The online thing is a wonderful way of meeting people and creating very focused discussions etc., but I think real, true friendship is too multi-faceted to maintain in cyberspace alone.

and last, lnhammer said: The past couple years, I've been slowly defictionalizing several friends I'd only known online. There's still a fair number, though, of strong aquaintances I only e-known.

All of these are points I think I'm about to address -- which is to say, I'm about to meander off the edge and around it a bit.

Reading is about the text, for me. This doesn't trivialize the online experience, or rather, it isn't intended to -- if anything, I mean the opposite. Reading is what started me on the long road to what I actually do with my life; it was, and remains, an intensely personal activity, in which the space between the text and the reader has a singular focus and intensity. It's stronger when what I'm reading is fiction, but it's strong regardless.

Some of the fanfic discussions spill into this, in a way that I'm sure they weren't meant to, because in some sense, what I read, how I experience what I read, is mine. This doesn't mean that I have an interest in writing anything at all about real people, but I think lnhammer's use of the word "de-ficitionalizing" was very apropos, if possibly unintentionally so. To some level, when I'm dealing with text, my relationship is with the text itself, and in an oddly amorphous way, secondarily with the writer.

I'm aware of this. When I was on GEnie, I was in fact so aware of this that my speaking voice, my "me" voice if you will, seldom filtered out into public discourse -- I was trying to speak clearly, to get the text of the message across, and as I knew I had no real ability to respond to the responses of the silent lurkers, I wanted to make my posts as bullet-proof as possible, where in this case, bullet-proof meant inoffensive. Not that I mind giving offense when it's merited, but rather, that I wanted to be certain I didn't give offense where it wasn't.

Because I was -- at that time -- so cautious in public posting, I was aware that my voice was distinctly different from my voice; that the text of the message was not delivered in the casual way I would normally deliver it (for one, less colourful language; for two a lot less gesticulating, which I tend to do at high speed, and for three, I speak really, really quickly in real life).

One thing I loved about the internet was the ability to have very focused discussions with like-minded people. Some of the things that fascinate me bore many, many people to death -- but in venues where e-communities gather, there's much less likelihood of this happening, because people tend to gather around mutual interests. Out of mutual interests like this, I did follow up in real life, I did make phone calls, I did have people come and visit me. My online-based friendships grew multiple layers when discussions wandered out of the realm of the focused topic and into more mundane things -- children, job stress, writing stress, family, other interests.

It's true that I don't see most of the friends who I initially met online all that often, usually for reasons of geography; it's also true that I've seen them at so many conventions or other separate gatherings, that I've built a sense of history with them, and that I do value them and consider them friends.

But regardless of the intensity of discussion online -- or perhaps even because of it -- I don't consider online-only to be entirely real; I consider it to be textual, with all that that implies. It can be intense, and personal in ways that only reading is -- but at the same time, I'm conscious of me, the text, and at the other end, someone who is interpreting themselves, filtering themselves, just as I do and did. I can understand how people feel like they're falling in love because of my reaction to and relation with text, with words, but I can't see taking that intensity and preserving it outside of the domain of text without a lot of other steps in between.

I expect that the online people I write to will be different in real life. I often expect them to bear little resemblance to what I read of their words online. I expect that they will find that I'm different, although, aside from manners (mine are, sadly, much better online), I can't predict how.

I don't need to meet people to value what I find online, and to prize it very, very highly -- but I don't have a word for what I do find online that doesn't somehow involve 'fictionalizing', the opposite of the de-fictionalizing that lnhammer mentioned previously. The sense of community is both personal and profound -- but at a remove, I'm not sure how much I'm reading into it and how much is already there, if that makes sense.

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Some of the fanfic discussions spill into this, in a way that I'm sure they weren't meant to, because in some sense, what I read, how I experience what I read, is mine.

I've never had this experience. I have had powerful responses to text, but I've never any sense of ownership of that text or even that response.

It's the response itself that's mine, if you will; a better word in this particular case would be unique. The response exists between the text that someone else put down and my ability to read and comprehend it. Non-fiction in theory should be studied all of one way, should be understood clearly and without prejudice -- but it isn't, and we all take different things out of it.

My understanding of the text occupies that space between what was written and my reading of it. It's that part that I own: the response. Because it's unlikely to be anyone's else's. In a like fashion, I assume that any reader's respone to text is unlikely to be exactly like any other reader's response -- I've learned this the hard way over time. If no two writers work in exactly the same way to come up with their stories/novels/poems, etc., it's also true -- but often less obvious -- that no two readers read in exactly the same way.

I don't own my reader-response, however, in a MINE MINE MINE sense, but in a "who else would possibly want to" sense; as I said, unique might be a better word -- and it would apply to any reader, in my universe.

In the context of this discussion, that's all that meant; but it occurred to me that in the context of the wider-ranging fanfic discussions, the concept of that reaction could be applied to even the way in which we read online text of people we've never met and don't otherwise know, in any any other environment, because the relationship at that point is entirely textual, and therefore subject to ... that particular reader subjectivity that graces us all when we read.

To me, the text is a kind of loan (even if I paid for the book). I enjoy the hell out of it while I'm reading (hopefully) but once I'm done, it's not really mine anymore. Sure, the book is sitting on my shelf and I could pick it up anytime and try for the response again, but I never do. Besides, everyone else with seven bucks in their pocket could be enjoying that same text.

The text itself, to me, is inviolate <wry g>. I would not rewrite someone else's text. Actually, not even in my post reading haze (that would be the one in which the ending of a book would make me see, you know, red) do I have that desire, and if I'm reading and I'm picking up the adjective-killing pencil of death, I'm also... finished reading. Which means the book goes to one side.

Again, the response exists in the space between the text and the reader; it doesn't own the text itself, just the interpretation of it.

Thanks for this discussion. It helps me understand (among other things) fan fiction much better.

Harry Connolly

Okay, and now someone who's passing by, let Harry Connolly know that I've answered? Since, no LJ, no LJ notification <wry g>.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for letting me know about the response. I can't lurk quite as much as usual. Partly that's because of the holidays, and partly because my home is a bit crowded (http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.lwe&art=40496) around here lately.

I did understand that it was your response that you owned, although looking at my post I can see I was, as usual, not entirely clear on that. But I don't even have ownership of that response, that exists only in my reaction to the text. To me, it still feels like a loaner gift from the author.

This is true even when I've had very strong reactions to a book, including lying awake at night worrying about the characters and thinking up ways they could get themselves out the trouble they were in. (Anybody know where I could get a life? I need one.)

Maybe it's because separating the text and my response is an intellectual process that I don't normally engage in. Too lazy, I guess.

Ah, well. I'm off to the toy store. Which my luck.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I forgot to sign that last message.

Harry Connolly.