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< Aliases are hard, perhaps impossible, on the modern Web

~detritus

I think I'd get attached to somebody, become friend with them and see them disappear eventually without notice. That'd hurt quite a bit if it were my only way of interacting with people, I think.

You are right about that, it has happened to me quite a few times already. I used to join an irc channel where I started making friendships, but one by one they started fading. Actually I think it was me who disappeared for a while, as I started doing other things in life, I moved to a new city, and I couldn't stay in touch. When I got back, the little community wasn't there anymore.

I have had similar experiences many times, sometimes I'd make a friend on a platform I wouldn't keep using, and eventually I would leave that platform and lose that friend. Some other time a girl I was getting along with straight up ghosted me in discord, I am not sure why....

It's sad, but eventually one starts to understand the fleeting nature of online friendships. I have never been too attached to people, honestly. Not that I don't appreciate them, it's just that life is in constant flux. Some of the friends I've made in the past (mostly IRL friends), I don't get along with them anymore, and some of them, even though I still care about them, I can see that we are starting to take different paths, and develop different ideas which make for a big gap in communication between us.

Here in the midnight pub, I am starting to get along with some of the people here, but I know it's not going to last forever, and they or me might disappear at some point, because on each our side of the screen things happen and we do not know each other beyond this platform so we might not even know what happened to the other person.

I like to appreciate the present time, knowing too well that in the future neither of us may still be around...

Kind of a sad note to end this, but I don't think it's actually that sad, as I said, such are the wonders of this unique medium of communication.

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~shoebx wrote:

Hi ~detritus, it's been a while! I got quite busy, otherwise I would've answered a bit earlier :P

~bartender, how about some fruit juice this time? Any kind will do, thanks!

Yeah, you're right, the majority of online relationships are temporary, just as with life. I did manage to keep a bunch of virtual friendships for almost a decade though, so I consider myself quite fortunate :D

I will probably lose most of them in the future for whatever reason still (me and my friends have long lives in front of us), but that's probably unavoidable.

Regarding the weird Discord thing, that place is quite different and, as every other place, there are different traditions and etiquettes. I'm not sure why she ghosted you, but perhaps she felt it was normal... *shrugs* don't worry too much about it :)

That said, coming back to the "small media", the nice thing with it and especially this place, is that all the phenomena that you described become evident and almost explicit: just like in a non-virtual pub, you know that you will find people that might stay in there for years, just as much as people going just once or twice.

I suppose that all of this is to say that, by making this fleeting nature clear, one doesn't expect to make "long term" friendships and so, once somebody goes away, they don't feel as bad as if they expected to bond a lot, if that makes sense.

I like to appreciate the present time, knowing too well that in the future neither of us may still be around...

That's a really nice way of seeing things :D

You know, considering this and the above, It's kinda a bummer that we lost most of this stuff in the metropolises of the Big Web.

Somehow, all of this slow, anonymous and well thought out discussion of the small web feels a lot more human and authentic than what most people have nowadays on their big "platforms" over there.

Kind of a sad note to end this, but I don't think it's actually that sad, as I said, such are the wonders of this unique medium of communication.

Indeed, I don't think that it's sad either, it's just... Different, I think.

Thanks for explaining yourself further, I really appreciate seeing such a thing from a different PoV :D

That said, I still haven't seen a pinball in here... Is there one somewhere?