Dreaming Paris

So I got tagged by Paula in a discussion over on Facebook about whether or not online friends are "real" friends. Or whether or not you treat people online like you do the ones in "real" life. I loved it when the term "meatspace" came into being to differentiate between the two groups. You had your online friends and meatspace friends. Who came up with that anyway? Both Nancy and Paula come to mind when I hear that term, as though it was one of them who coined it, but I really don't know. Maybe they were the first ones I saw use it. They're both clever enough to have been the originators. Way, way in the beginning of my online life, when I first dipped my toes in the waters of chat rooms and newsgroups, I was myself, but more so. Meaning, I was very direct and blunt. Until I saw the reactions. When I finally found the newsgroup misc.writing (which is a sad, sad place these days-I just checked 2 days ago), I was a bit more diplomatic. I could mull over my words and delete them before hitting send, something you can't do when looking someone in the eye. So I'm now actually the reverse of what peeps say you become when you get online. When you're with me, though I don't mean to because I like being nice to people, I'm more likely to blurt out something very tactless, or thoughtless, than when you talk to me in text. But in both places I tend to not have much to say for long periods of time, and then suddenly I become motor mouth/fingers. As for which of my friends are the real ones, the online or the meatspace, well, there is no differentiation. They're all real if I call them friend. Some of the people I've actually met are dear to my heart, while others are just close acquaintances. Same with the people I know online. And actually, some of the people online may not be dear friends in that there is no close, ongoing relationship happening, but many of them are still dear to my heart, probably because I've interacted with them for more years than I've actually interacted with the people I've met. They're more a part of my life than the ones I get together with from time to time...or year to year...or decade to decade. Because I live a large percentage of my life online, through words, reading them and writing them. It suits me. I think that right there is why there is even an argument about what's real and what isn't. I know that there are many people for whom this online life just wouldn't suit, and they're not going to understand how one can feel just as close, and care just as much, for people they've never even met than for ones that they have. I'm a shy person until I begin to feel comfortable in my surroundings or in my role. I'm not outgoing. I'm an introvert. But that doesn't mean I don't like being social, or that I don't want to be with people. But people can tire me out quite easily. So this online world works for me. When I need companionship, I can find it. When I need to feel a part of other people, you're all right there for me at the touch of my on button. And when I'm tired and want to be alone, I can be. I don't have to make my excuses and say goodbye. So, if you all aren't real, those of you I haven't met yet, don't tell me. I don't wanna know.

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I love the internet. You see, I'm one of those people who detests having to call up offices and talk to strange people. I don't even call up friends to talk to them very often. It's not that I don't like talking on the phone. I don't mind it at all...if YOU call me. But for some reason or other, making the first move, not just with the phone, but just about anything, is something that I find very difficult to do except under special circumstances. Even under those circumstances it's difficult for me, but I make myself do it anyway. The only people with whom I have no difficulty making first moves are my parents (all 3 of them), brother, husband, and offspring. Even if you're a close friend of mine, I experience a feeling deep in my gut that takes the form of an imaginary barrier that I must push through in order to make that move. I really hate that about myself. Anyway, as I was saying, I love the internet. It allows me to look things up rather than call anyone for information. And in this case, it's a good thing I searched first before calling animal services because there is no animal control department as such. There is animal services for domesticated animals, and there's the Fish and Wildlife service for all others, but they only enforce the laws, they don't cart away nuisance animals. I didn't know this. So now I'm much more knowledgeable about the laws regarding wildlife in Florida, and the options a homeowner has with regard to nuisance animals, which really aren't many. They'd rather we leave the animals in peace and take precautionary measures to dissuade the animals from wanting to come into our yards. It's only in cases where they are damaging property or showing signs of being a health hazard (like rabies) that you are supposed to have them carted away to be euthanized (I have a feeling they're a bit lax on applying those litmus tests because they stopped requiring trapping businesses to have a permit). Well, unless the animals are truly dangerous to us, I'm not making any calls to wildlife trappers to have them trapped and euthanized. It's against the law to relocate them for a variety of reasons that all make sense, so that's out, though one of our neighbors is doing it anyway. I don't want to snitch on my neighbor, either. I am concerned, though, because we found out he caught one last night, and what if it was the baby raccoons' mom? So I read up on raccoons and discovered that these babes will probably do okay because they're about at the point where they would be weaned anyway and mom would be making them fend for themselves (which clearly they were doing yesterday), but they're supposed to continue to live with her until after the winter. I imagine she still has some teaching to do. What if they're now momless? I also think about my cats, but so far, for quite a few years, in fact, the cat and coon populations seem to have been able to coexist in peace. We've always had a coon or three pop out of the woodsy area next to our property at night to rifle through our garbage until we finally made room in the garage (the small part of it that wasn't enclosed) to keep the cans safe 'til trash day. But it wasn't until this year that we've seen this one raccoon, and now the babies, actually come out boldly during the day. I'm really feeling certain that our neighbor got the mom. That makes me sad. I now think I have an armadillo living under my studio. That's probably what dug the huge hole near the back of it, and the raccoon moved elsewhere. What I read says coons move from place to place, usually hiding in convenient out of the way places, not places they dig or make themselves. So while I'm certain what I heard under my studio was a raccoon, I don't hear it any more, and it had to have gotten crowded when the rains came and the cats started taking refuge under there as well.

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So I'm supposed to be working on lesson plans, and I will...eventually, but I've been going through all of my social networking groups, of which I have more than 10, but not too many more, and I'm cleaning house. I tried to delete a few on Ning that I joined with a fake name just to see what they are like, but it didn't update my deletions properly. One thing I've discovered that I really like is that you can use RSS feeds for keeping up with people on Twitter that you want to follow but don't because they just post waaaaaaayyyyy too many tweets (Hi, Serenebabe! ;-) ), or because you just want to remain an anonymous viewer of their tweets and don't want to be seen in their list of followers. This also takes care of the problem of Twitter's latest move to hide @replies that aren't directed to you personally, so you can keep up with conversations. So now I get the tweets that I want to see on a regular basis through the Firefox extension twitterfox that pops them up nicely as they come in at the bottom of my screen, and the others I can check up on when I do my regular rss feed updates using Sage, another Firefox extension,  throughout the day. Then there's Facebook, which is doing a pretty cool job of bringing together at least some of the ways that I keep in touch with peeps, pulling together my tweets and blog posts into one place so that my friends, family, and acquaintances don't have to click to a lot of different places to keep up with me. Facebook, my blog, and Twitter altogether in one place. I used to like that I had a separate identity of sorts online and apart from the peeps who know me in real life, but lately, I don't care about that any more and I've given up on remaining anonymous. Anyone who looks me up on the net is going to find me, and I rather like that. I'm not concerned about weirdos and such because jeez, I probably walk by crazed sociopaths at least once a week if not more, and I've managed to live this long. Anyway, as I was going through Twitter pages to make sure I'd not missed anything, I discovered I did. I missed a tweet by @SourGrapes about his article in Flanders Today about online social networking. In the article he wrote about a study that followed two offline groups who used online networking to support the offline world and made mention of the "social heritage" that they created through the online networking sites. That made me think of MW (the newsgroup misc.writing) and how my core network online is from peeps who used to be (and some still are) part of that group. We all just sort of migrated into other things, but we kept together. MW was our social networking place, the one spot where we all congregated originally and where we developed a social heritage, but once moving on, we continued to build on that heritage but in other places. Most of us have ended up friending each other on FB and twitter and have maintained our connection. Even if we haven't friended everyone we knew in the past we can still keep up with them because each one of us maintains some connections that others don't which show up on our pages. It's pretty cool. Unlike the groups in Hope's article, though, we don't have a place of our own. We don't have a name, nor an identity really, though most of us came together through our interests in writing, and yet there is still this social heritage identity thing going on. We belong to each other, so to speak. But we're kind of a weird entity in the world of social networks, wouldn't you say? Maybe not. Maybe there are thousands of groups just like us, following each other around from social networking site to social networking site, never quite settling around in any one place (until FB) but still managing to hang together. For me, it's been 10 years now. Wow. What's even cooler is that I've been able to meet some of you in person, or talk to you on the phone. But 10 years in the social networking world of the internet. You guys have been my friends/acquaintances for longer than most of the people in my physical world.

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Bent Objects: But, We're Not Having Fun....

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This problem with the sidebar only occurs when you view my blog as a whole. When you click to individual posts, the layout is as it should be. I've clicked to each post since this happened to see if there is something in one particular post that is causing the problem, and nada. I just don't get it. Why did my sidebar move, and why only on the opening screen? Do you know just how uncomfortable it feels to have your blog not appear the way you want it to? It's like having to run to the store wearing your sweat pants and with your hair unwashed in a ponytail, hoping know one you know will see you. It's just all wrong. :-(

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