Even the ones that no longer exist in cyberspace?

I find it depressing that most of my relationships outside of work exist only in cyberspace. I have not found a good way to meet people where I moved, so I've pretty much just maintained the ones that started virtually, morphed to IRL, and now have moved back to virtual again.

What a fantastic thread!

Pre-internet, I traveled in a few large and casual social circles (living in NYC makes it easy to do that) but had very few close friends. Once social networking became popular via the web, I tended to linger on the outside - I was either too busy or just didn't see the point. My reluctance to join my fellow generation x-ers in the grand social experiment pinned me as a lurker, a term that's unnecessarily pejorative. Once I moved to San Francisco in 1996, I found that my vast social circles were gone, and while I was able to make one or two close friends, there was a noticeable void in my social life. The void remained for the better part of a decade, until I was invited to join the party at LoT. I think that the unique qualities of the group here so eloquently described by CP above are the reason that I stay. I plan to be living in Southern California in the next few months, and my hope is that I'll be able to maintain my internet friendships in a face-to-face real life setting.

I think that idea that social networking through the internet alone via MySpace and the like is so widespread is probably fallacious. In my own case, it filled a need that was created by my own social expectations based on my personal history. I sincerely doubt that technology, particularly the internet, is bringing about a massive shift in social mechanics the same way it's affecting things like commerce and privacy.

To expand on Euro's thought about the internet being less about anonymous participation and increasingly about public participation you might fiind Michael Kinsley's recent Slate editorial of interest ("On the internet, everybody knows you're a dog").

I think one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that this new fangled social network isn't nearly so pervasive as it may appear. Part of the problem is that most of the people who talk about societal trends are also people who are involved strongly with the internet (academics, journalists). Most people I know do not have web pages, do not belong to message boards, to not belong to social networks.

The number is getting larger, of course, but I think a lot of people immersed in these things are starting to think that everybody is now immersed in these things.

It has been an interesting transformation. I joined my first message board (on a dial-up BBS almost 20 years ago). I know that there are people who have been doing this stuff far longer than me, but I'm definitely in the top 0.1% in terms of longegivity. I've been a lurker, I've been active. I attended my first internet based "meet" in 1992 when a group of people got together to talk about the MUD they all played.

So unlike most of you, this technology hasn't changed the way I socialize, it has always been part of the way I socialize (I'm old for this to be true, but it is increasingly true for today's children).

It is hard to say if it has molded how I form relationships in real life (though unlike many people I've never had a romantic relationship that grew out of online) or if it is just a good fit to how I am. I move on quickly from social groups and without looking back, both online and real life.

It has been five years since I last talked to someone I went to high school with. It has been longer since my last undergrad contact. I haven't spoken to anybody from grad school since I graduated in 1998. I go years between talking to my sisters. Six months after leaving Wells Fargo I literally could not remember the name of a person I had worked with every day for five years.

The same is true online.

As for larger social impacts, I think eventually it could have one harmful effect. Intellecual cocooning. The vast majority of people don't like to be confronted and forced to think about their beliefs and ideas. Their intellectual framework is preferably a passive thing. This is not new and has always been true. But in the past it was difficult to avoid exposure to ideas you didn't like.

Now, you can immerse yourself in a community where everybody thinks exactly as you do. You don't ever have to here a discouraging word or think about the underpinnings of what you think.

Left or right, square or kinky, less filling or tastes great, you can live a life that deludes you into thinking that everyone is just like you. And that is a harmful delusion because everybody reacts poorly when something tries to puncture strongly held delusions.

When I'm dead, I want all my posts burned onto a massive black monolith, and the monolith I want launched into orbit around Jupiter.

I think we have been seeing the results of this in the political division we have seen over the past few years. It is now possible to listen to radio shows where everyone agrees or go to message boards where everyone agrees. Personally, I find these kinds of places to be boring to the extreme (even when I happen to agree with them), but too many people would prefer to only hear from those who are like-minded.

Technology has definitely made it easier to avoid being challenged in our beliefs. I think we all suffer a bit from that.

I'm still not so sure of that - in the past you just moved to like minded communities, whether that be a state of the right color, or a religious group you associated with. There aren't that many social groups we enter into without some sort of selective choice. Even when born into a community you disagree with, there are always the subcultured "liekminded" rebels.

Yes, but except for the few groups that did (try to) isolate themselves they still lived most of their daily social lives within a larger community of some sort. And even if there is a self-selected sameness it was much harder to filter out "intrustions." There were also fewer filters of the world out there so for the most part everybody had to work with the same filters and then pervert them to their own ideas. No you can just go out and find the filter that fits you perfectly and never even think, just parrot.

To a large extent I think we may be swapping physical homogeneity with intellectual/emotional homogeneity.

Before I owned a computer I was a teen with a telephone. I used to wish I had every wonderful late-night phone conversation transcribed or recorded so I could keep them forever and ever. I still have every note I passed in high school. When I began emailing I horded my emails as a gold mine of history - when I wasn't sure how something went down, I could search my emails for it - but eventually the file was corrupted. I very nearly cried.

My obsession with such things is probably because my memory is so bad. These days I'm not as concerned with documenting every step of my life. Still, every few months or so I'm back at Mousepad, searching up some minor detail of my history. Just a few weeks ago I used an old Mousepad post to figure out which family we go to for Thanksgiving on even years and which on odd years.

Anyway, my post above was more of a joke than anything. I would like to publish a book of poetry, but if not that, then a "Best of Lounge of Tomorrow's Open Mic" would be great too. :)

To follow up a little bit on my last post.

Part of it is also the scale. In the "olden days" you could self-select groups but it was mostly self-limiting as the granularity you could achieve. They were, after all, generally limited to physical proximity.

With the geographical requirement removed by modern technology the ability to coccoon yourself to a very narrow cocoon is amplified. In the entire Bay Area there are probably only a couple dozen people who would subscribe to my mix of atheism, skepticism, and libertarianism. But with modern technology I could (if I chose) essentially limit all of my "social" interactions to such people and also allow them to filter all of my interactions with those outside of that group.

Spooky - particularly after I went back to MP to dredge up 3894's Lashbear Sig immortalised in this thread.

I expect there will be traces of me around WAY after I'm gone - which is kind of nice.