Internet and you. Addicted?

i don't understand why the internet is referred to as unreal communication.

and yes, of course i'm addicted

It is a VERY unnatural form of human communication especially if you look over the course of history. The complete lack of body language and voice inflection combined with the speed of transmission is very unreal. When you meet people you only know online you can start to see it. I've only met a few and only 1 of them was just like she was online. It's very surreal to have written communication pass so quickly.
 
But it is a very real comforting place for people who are unable or do not want communicate via the normal ways. Get angry all you want at this statement, but the internet is excellent communications tools for social "misfits".

Myself, I like to be alone (and left alone) and I do not have any real world friends anymore; never really did after age 25. The internet is perfect for me.
 
Even if it's unnatural it's actually pretty much essential for me because many of the people I'm close to are very far away and phoning them is inconvenient for everyone. It's nice to be able to talk to someone whenever we're online at the same time.
 
It's the memes, man. I can't imagine life without lolcats. I gotta get my daily fix.


It is a VERY unnatural form of human communication especially if you look over the course of history. The complete lack of body language and voice inflection combined with the speed of transmission is very unreal. When you meet people you only know online you can start to see it. I've only met a few and only 1 of them was just like she was online. It's very surreal to have written communication pass so quickly.

More unnatural than phones? Or letters? Or TV? There are a lot of different ways to communicate other than face to face. Yeah, people act differently online (I do sometimes, trying not to), but there are some benefits. I've met people from other countries and learned a lot of things that I wouldn't have just in school and staying in little ole California. Connecting people is a good thing in the end, I think.


But it is a very real comforting place for people who are unable or do not want communicate via the normal ways. Get angry all you want at this statement, but the internet is excellent communications tools for social "misfits".

Myself, I like to be alone (and left alone) and I do not have any real world friends anymore; never really did after age 25. The internet is perfect for me.

Absolutely. Options are good for people. Other than the friends I have in the racing community, 80% of my friends are on-line, the other 20% for the most part I haven't seen in a long time for various reasons after leaving school. If you find that sad then that's fine. I'm happy with it. Fact is, the world is becoming increasingly web dependent and long-distance. You have more and more relationships initially developing online (the internet has been my primary means of meeting specific people from the racing world, first by email or message board then on to phone or straight to face to face meets, but I'd still say the majority of my meets are spontaneous face to face conversations at the track). What with SMS and AIM messaging being so popular, it's easy to see why this is - it's instant, it's convenient, and I find it's easier to approach or get ahold of people.
 
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More unnatural than phones? Or letters? Or TV? There are a lot of different ways to communicate other than face to face. Yeah, people act differently online (I do sometimes, trying not to), but there are some benefits. I've met people from other countries and learned a lot of things that I wouldn't have just in school and staying in little ole California. Connecting people is a good thing in the end, I think.

Absolutely. Options are good for people. Other than the friends I have in the racing community, 80% of my friends are on-line, the other 20% for the most part I haven't seen in a long time for various reasons after leaving school. If you find that sad then that's fine. I'm happy with it. Fact is, the world is becoming increasingly web dependent and long-distance. You have more and more relationships initially developing online (the internet has been my primary means of meeting specific people from the racing world, first by email or message board then on to phone or straight to face to face meets, but I'd still say the majority of my meets are spontaneous face to face conversations at the track). What with SMS and AIM messaging being so popular, it's easy to see why this is.

Well, I would say that both TV and telephone are also unnatural however the phone does allow voice inflection and that makes a bigger difference than you might imagine. Letters have one big difference, a large time delay. The way in which you write a letter is quite different from how you write an email or carry on a spoken conversation. TV is not a method of friendship per se so that doesn't really seem relevant to me.

I don't in any way mean to imply that being on the internet is sad or pitiful or pathetic or bad or whatever else. CLEARLY I spend quite a lot of my time here! I'm not meaning to pass any kind of judgement here. However I do believe it's an unnatural form of communication. Unnatural does not carry a negative connotation. There are plenty of people who think wearing clothes is unnatural.
 
Addicted to the interweb? Nah, I shouldn't think so.

As you can tell from my rep and post count over here, I clearly enjoy my time here. The internet is mostly a time waster, not much else. I enjoy spending time on the internet because, it allows me to access culture I otherwise wouldn't be able to. Which I think would be awful, life in Arkansas isn't exactly interesting..
 
Internet is good and fine. I've defently cut back in the past year or two.

I almost never use facebook anymore. Mind you I'm on this god forsaken site quite a bit.

If the power goes out I just work on my car, play guitar, play boardgames... stuff like that.
 
THe thing is, the internet is a huge time-waster for me. When I do things that I genuinely really enjoy that are not internet-related, such as reading books, I don't care about the internet any more. Similarly, when I'm with my girlfriend, the only internet access I have is on my phone - meaning I still get emails, but I ignore them 90% of the time and never, ever respond to them while I'm with her.

I suppose it's something that I can easily replace with other human interaction, but it is certainly something that is very useful and I quite enjoy using it when I have the access to it and nothing else to do.
 
When you meet people you only know online you can start to see it. I've only met a few and only 1 of them was just like she was online.
I beg to differ. I've been on Web forums and IRC since 1999 and have attended forum meetings of five different forums (and their attached IRC channels), so in total I've met nearly 100 people from the Internet.
With most of them I could talk face to face as easily as I've done before in IRC, IM or on the forums. Perhaps it has to be said that none of the communities are dating websites.
I've met some of my best friends online, and due to the distances most of the friend talk is still done by Instant Messenger or IRC.
 
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I'm on the computer 10 hours a day and when i was on my road trip for 2 weeks not having access to a tv, internet, computer, i didn't miss it in the slightest.
 
That's pretty much the way I am. If I'm around a computer, I end up spending too much time on the intarwebs. However, if I'm out actually doing something I rarely miss it.
 
Before the internet, it was video games. Before video games, it was books.

I'm addicted to wasting time.
 
Addicted? nah....

*checks other open finalgear page by F5ing in the main forumpage*

I'm not addicted at al *F5* , never spend to much time online *F5* , never anywhere late because I stayed online *F5* , never get into internet arguments *F5* , never shaired stuff online I realy shouldent have *F5*.....realy.....*F5* , I'm fine *F5* :p
 
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It's all about the pterodactyl porn.
 
I'm very addicted.

When I don't have access to the internet I tend to get very irritable (even more so than usual), I get un-comfortably bored after a few days and after about a week start getting depressed (even more so than my usual morbid self).
I guess this is because most of my social life is based on-line, my friends all live over 65 miles away so I don't get to personaly meet them outside of college without lots of planning and money. Even then I only know about 7 to 8 people as most seem to take instant dislikes to me.

I find it easy to find people online who share simillar interests that I can chat to about stuff I actually like.
Before college I had no friends at all and just tended to play video games and read books. At least I wasn't a miserable, bad-tempered, nutcase like I am now though.

Take the internet away from me and you cripple my entire social life. And thats pretty isolating after a week or so.

It's all about the pterodactyl porn.
And that too...
 
The internet is the only place I can go to share my enthusiasm for cars and driving. The people I know are only interested in two things, getting drunk and getting laid. That's cool and pretty much normal at this age I guess, but I go silent when the conversation turns to Jaegermeister.

Addicted? Nah, but I wish the people around me were a little more like-minded. I've lost touch with too many old friends. Ah fuck. http://img407.imageshack.**/img407/7479/facepalmm.gif
 
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