It was an excellent, reflective post. +2, thumbs up, “This is cool”, etc.

I personally feel, however, that there may be less of an emotional connection to someone you talk to regularly on a message board. Most of the time you’ve never seen pictures of these individuals, and have never even heard their voice. It is a very strange situation to mourn someone if that is the case.

Going back to James Kim, when he was first announced missing, I felt the same way i felt when I heard Magic Johnson announced he had the HIV virus. When you have a great respect for what a public figure has accomplished, it affects you without your control.

I had the pleasure of meeting this wonderful girl from Texas when I was on Pogo. We got along great, except the boyfriend came into the picture. It got to the point where she started pushing me away because she was having feelings for me that she shouldn’t have been having because she had a boyfriend. I still say that she is my soul mate, but i haven’t talked to her in a year or so, so I guess we move on.

It’s true when they say WoW or any other MMORPG is not just a game anymore. There’s a really community to it, and there’s real people behind that ugly blood elf hunter! I guess it’s the same with anything in RL, you spend enough time with someone and you start to develop some kind of relationship for that person. You might never know them outside of work, school, WoW, etc, but you’ve got that relationship where you’re just a good friend in that environment and you know stuff about them that nobody else does.

It’s really weird. Kinda scary. Because in RL, i’m the most anti-social person on earth, but I spend so much time playing WoW outside of work (I work graveyard shift) that the people in my guild are my friends now!

The only thing I can say is I’m a huge music fan, and when Dimebag Darrell was shot on stage that fateful Dec. 8th, it literally had me in tears because I loved the guy so much just based on his guitar playing. Same thing when Dale Earnhardt died crashing in Daytona. Same thing when Kurt Cobain shot himself. Real people, I’ve never met. Yet I felt an emotional attachment to these people that made me react in a way I would have if a family member died.

This thing we call life is in for a drastic overhaul with the internet becoming more and more popular. I hate social networking sites, but in reality, these are the new bars. Instead of going out to bars now, we hang out on social networking sites…lol.

I think I know exactly what you are talking about. I was surprised by how much James’ death affected me given that I only knew him through his work. My wife was also surprised how concerned I was when he and his family first disappeared. Reading or listening to people’s work some how gives you a personal connection to them and at some level makes you feel as though you know them — when in fact you do not. It is very much a part of our new age.

Gil

Everyone’s personal experiences are really touching to hear and this subject as a whole really says something about basic human compassion.

We all care in some form or another, despite how superficial it is. It’s still care and it’s still genuine and that’s one of the shining merits of mankind.

Flash forward a bit, and my family — those still alive — split far apart, moving to different parts of the world, along with the extended, occasional family. Johnnie from down the block, well, we lost touch many years ago, right before he moved out of house, had an operation, became Joni, lived on the streets, contracted HIV, and died in obscurity — he never lived to see the Internet. As for the friends in school, well, those who stayed together ended up married, remarried, cross-married, and now share a sort of oddly sweet, and mostly dysfunctional, 21’st century family. Those, not unlike myself, who left for greener pastures, are mostly in jail or are playing a role in running our country — either is a bit a tragic. At least some of them are being reformed. As for me, I got out before it got interesting.

I chose the strange, geeky world of technology. It got me out of “my circumstances,” and into a mildly-successful life. And with the Internet becoming such an integral part of it, the landscape changed dramatically. I met a thousand Johnnie’s, Joni’s, and friends (yes, friends) from all over the world — all ages, races, nationalities, religions, and political affiliations. Sure, most of you I’ve never met — like, in the flesh — but over time, and in spite of the distances that may separate us, some of you with whom I’ve grown close, and the many of you with whom I’ve not, you have touched me deeply, and in so many ways.

It’s amazing really, I mean, when you really stop to think about it.

I’ve heard it said, even by many I work with, that “… it’s a shame so many people waste their time on the Internet …” And that “… the Internet is depersonalizing the concept of real person-to-person interaction …” (my personal favorite). As if the person at the other end of the wire is any less of a person — to me or anyone else — or that we couldn’t share real feelings, real emotions, real time, together, and yes, sometimes in person. Actually, I’ve met more of you from the Internet, from the ether, than friends I grew up with. Over the years, at conferences, meet-ups, on cruises, at announcements (thank you MicroSoft and Apple) and, from time to time, just to meet, I have met dozens of you.

But whether we’ve met or not, the many layers and distance that the Internet can put between us cannot insulated me from the hurt. When you fall ill, I feel. When your circumstances are unfortunate, I feel. When your happy, I feel.

As for how I will deal with the many of you who have lives that mean so much, to so many, and to me, well, we will all have to deal with it more or less in the same way — our own way. And no matter how many miles of cable and fibre, or the number of repeaters, switches, or routers that separate us, we’ll feel it, because the Internet neither hastens nor hampers our ability to care.

The Internet made us to see the person as words, not as soul.
We pay attention to the ideas, not to the one who caries them out.
We forget that on the other site of the monitor is staying a person who can cry and can laugh, a person who might need right now to hear one warm word.

So, when we meet online we must hug each other.
Take my hug and give me one, please

First, a coworker of mine moved over a 1000 miles away. However, we kept in touch through blogging (he’s the one who introduced me to it). I got to know the other readers of his blog. A cool little community built up around his blog - people he’d known throughout his life in completely different times and places got to know and like each other. Then he died suddenly. Each of us posted farewell messages to(about) him on his blog. His family, who had been completely oblivious to his blogging habit, found those messages and were bolstered by the genuine outpouring of love and friendship from people literally all over the world. The minister who conducted his funeral even read the blog to get a better understanding of who my friend was in preparation for the service.

Later on, I got involved in a little social network that had been established for a while (a little slice of fandom similar to your Guild). I only met a couple of these people online, but felt like I knew at least certain pieces of their personalities fairly well. They all had stories about a member who died just before I joined the group. This member had been a witty and much beloved participant in online discussions. Even though I never met him, I ended up knowing his whole story and recognized little tribute mentions that were made about him in various circumstances (like certain people wearing t-shirts that he’d designed). It was odd feeling nostalgic about someone I’d never even remotely known.

Most recently, I’ve had to deal with the death of my own mother. The only real outlet I have to express the depth of my feelings is on my own blog. I’ve told the 5 or 6 people who read my blog more than I’ve told my own family during this difficult period. My readers (who I do know IRL) patiently read through my expressions of pain and loss, waiting for me to post more positive messages (which I have finally started to do). I’m not sure how I would cope with this severe loss without my blog. Death is an odd thing to deal with on any level, much less in our world of strange online half-connections.

I was one of the people who reached out to you after James Kim’s death. I listened to the CNET podcasts (BOL, everyday) and felt like I got to know major pieces of the personalities of each of you. It’s strange, but even though I’d never met you in person, I couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible James’ loss must be for you (since you seemed to work more closely with him than the other BOLers). It just felt so real to me. I can’t really explain it any other way. And that is what I guess is so special and so odd about the internet.

But I’m glad you posted this. I think it merits discussion, especially with social mediums evolving at the rate they are.

When I deleted my MySpace profile, I actually had people “checking up” on me in the real world. This was both strange and flattering. That extension of myself was dear to at least a couple of people yet in some cases these were people I rarely (in some cases never) spoke to in real life. I too have experienced the other side of that longing, admittedly.

A real world equivalent: Have you ever developed some kind of friendly connection with, say, a bartender or a particular cafe worker only to be (perhaps overly) crestfallen once discovering they’re no longer employed there?

All relationships carry some risk, physical or online. But things like MySpace or blogs can foster relationships in bulk …thus increasing the potential for both happiness and, by design, pain.

Thanks for this really touching piece, and for reminding us of the importance of all connections, whatever the medium between them is.

The second theory that comes to mind is one proposed by Mark Granovetter. He came up with something called “tie strength.” “Ties” are the relationships we have and the strength of ties (weak ties versus strong ties) has to do with how close we feel to them. Granovetter argued that weak ties (what we would probably call “acquaintances” rather than “friends”) were far more important than we usually give them credit for. His original study looked at how people found a job. He noticed that people who had a lot of acquaintances (weak ties) had a much easier time finding a job than those who had more close friends (strong ties) but fewer acquaintances. He then noticed that often people will give more credibility to weak ties than strong ties, and will often tell weak ties information they would never tell anybody else. Think about the bartender who knows everybody’s secrets but isn’t really anybody’s close friend. There are a lot of people in academia that think the relationships we make online are basically a series of “weak ties” rather than “strong ties” and that Walther’s idea of “hyperpersonal relationships” is nothing more than false intimacy.

Part of me buys that…and then a big part of me denies it. I think about people in online cancer support groups (I’ve done quite a bit of study there), and it’s hard for me to swallow that those people aren’t honest to goodness close friends. When you share your hopes and dreams with someone else, and when his/her response affects you, it’s hard to argue that’s not a real, honest-to-goodness relationship.

I think it’s really interesting stuff. Otherwise I don’t guess I’d be studying it. I know I’ve met some really great people online…and I’ve met several crackpots. I’m guessing if I engaged the people I meet daily face to face in the same kinds of conversations I have online, I’d think I know more crackpots and really great people than I currently do.

I do, however, lament the loss of the geographic community. The Internet tends to cluster people together based on interest, not on geography. There’s a nice part to that. If you hold an unusual belief or interest, it’s easy to find others who share that belief or interest online. But it usually comes at the expense of meeting your (physical) next door neighbor. Robert Putnam, in his book “Bowling Alone” says back in the 1950s, bowling alleys used to get most of their business from community bowling leagues. Neighbors who would get together to bowl on a team. Today, bowling alleys get most of their revenues from people who bowl as a family, or individually. We don’t really know our neighbors. Backyard political debates between physical neighbors who were on different sides of the ideological fence is drying up. We just don’t debate our friends anymore. Debate has turned into contention, and we let Fox and CNN do our debating for us, anyway. With geographic communities, we could have differences that we respected because, at the end of our political differences, we still had to be next door neighbors who got along. Now, if we choose to live our lives in niche cyber-communities that never challenge our deeply entrenched ideas (but instead vehemently support them), we certainly can. That, I think, is sad.

In my social media course at the University of Miami we talked about victims of the Sao Paulo flight and the orkut blogs that were left behind after the passengers’ deaths. One message contains friendly excitement for their visit to Brazil, the next is the first post in a series of well wishes and condolences for the victim.

This is a tough issue that we all will have to deal with at one point or another.