Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
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The internet makes that easy--I only have to deal with one person, one screen, at a time. I can spend as long as I want thinking up a reply. (Even in chatrooms, the conversation is much slower than speech.) I don't have to wait for a break in the conversation or feel like I'm forcing myself into other people's space.
I don't have to give out more personal details than I'm comfortable with. Even if someone asks direct, personal, invasive questions, there's no way for them to be as forceful as in-person confrontations. The computer screen works as a buffer zone that lets me relax enough to participate.
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Undoubtely Internet opens the possibility of easier social exchanges. The distance makes the exchanges much more controllable then the interactions de visu, that are real time and implacable, unless carefully cultivated. Which for many people might mean no interactions at all, if it were not through Internet. The solitude, the isolation. The plague of modernity. Thanks Internet, with an impact on our individual life that is comparable with what has been the industrial revolution and the advent of electricity. Since Internet our life is not the same, maybe not for all of us, but much more so for our children.
Of this easier social exchanges Is take advantage, but Es also, like myself. It remains to explain why on MR there is this impressive predominance of Is versus Es. Is this common to other sites also?
I might venture an idea. On MR, participants are interested in reading. Reading offers to the Is a further occasion of entertaining themselves with their inner world, using the words of the book as a catalyst, but at their pace and in total control. Reading requires concentration, that Is are likely to have in larger measure: they must be doing something while they sit all alone, mumbling to themselves. The same for me of course. But maybe Poppea, Dixie and me, we are exceptional.
