Do you consider your SL friends "better" than your RL friends?

I wouldn't put it past congress to raise this question....I mean come on....we're talking about a govmt. that concerns itself with what consenting adults do behind closed doors in their own homes out of mutual love, trust and desire.

see the following......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaUl6x1YXpg&eurl=http://thememlingindex.com/texas_obscenity_laws.html

if you watch this entire vid.....you wont question anything congress does....but you might be a little afraid lol

Exactly.

These are mere acquaintances, nothing more.

I forced my two RL best friends to join SL if they wanted to spend any time at all with me (heh, just kidding, they LIKE SL, they do, I swear!) Actually we spend a lot less time together since we're all in SL, but we're always just an IM and a TP away, which is good cause we're not always all in the same state.

Um. It wasn't abrasive. Just... odd, and perhaps a little upsetting to any burns victims or amputees here.

Of the few people I know with serious disabilities in real life, they tend to have larger (and more reliable) circles of friends than I, perhaps due to the support networks put in place for them.

From a personal point of view, it takes me a long time to develop what I consider good friendships. My dearest friends are people I have known for years. I can't imagine establishing a friendship as close with anybody through a computer screen, and so I certainly consider RL friendships "better" than SL friendships (which are more prone to evaporate overnight, in my limited experience).

Friends are friends whether in rl or sl you judge a friend on how much you like them not whether there in rl or sl thats like saying what do you prefer black or white friends lol.

RL friends. BUT given that RL and online (not just SL) friends are a blurred line for me, this poll does not cover all options.

The net is a way of communicating and sooner or later I tend to meet people I *really* care about.

And the other way round actually ... bringing RL friends to SL.

I can empathise with Walker, actually. I make friends very easily, the ones who stay close in my heart I might not actually SEE that often but when I do, it's like there was no interruption. For me, online minimises that gap between.

I also do have the short term friends thing but tbh unless you really piss me off over a sustained period of time even then the friends here tend to stay in my heart. Takes a lot to get thrown out into the cold

An easy choice for me as I don't have RL friends, my SL ones. At least I can rely on them to be around & talk when they're not busy lol

This I agree with. That's why I see my online friendships and romantic engagements as being context-based, and I try to keep them in perspective in light of the rather limited context in which they play themselves out. It doesn't make them less "real" or "valid" to me, or stigmatize them in any way, but it does mean that I am fully aware of all of the person that I am *not* seeing -- through no fault of their own or intentional deception, but simply from the fact that there are many other ways information is communicated in RL that cannot take place online. The SL universe, as wonderful as it is, has its limits and those limits are substantial and significant.



I agree that the particular kind of interaction technology is quite irritating in some ways. In RL, you have the phone and email and so forth, but noone has any real way of knowing whether you are *there* or not. If you do not answer the phone or respond to an email, they may be annoyed, but you can always say you were in the middle of something, or you left the phone in the car, or were on another call or what have you. In SL, the only way you can get that kind of control over the situation is by blocking everyone from seeing whether you are online. To be honest, there's a decent case that can be made that the seeing friends online feature should simply be removed -- yes, it is convenient, but at the same time many people find it to be privacy robbing and so they turn it off, and then when they turn it off, the people on their friends list get pissed that it has been turned off (because probably that's one of the reasons why they wanted you on their own list, so that they could know when you were around and were available to interact with). So it's kind of a mess. I think it would be less convenient, but much more reflective of real life, if the seeing friends online feature were simply removed -- if you want to see whether your friend is available to chat, send her an IM ... just like picking up the phone in RL.

I voted for keeping RL friends but then RL friends are the only friends I have. I have many aquantances but few people I consider friends. All my friends are friends in real life. Some of my friends I met in SL.

Much as I like my on-line friends, the people I interact with in RL are more important to me.

You can't really disable online notifications. There's a few people that use freely available scripted devices to track when I come online. I wouldn't really mind people tracking my online status if instant message mode wasn't present.

Some shy or less demanding people will only message you when you're offline. So hiding your online status can make things a little awkward for them. It often results in "Oops!. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you was offline."

I'm the same. I often only message people when they're offline so as not to get drawn into a long conversation. Although I am learning how to end conversations without upsetting them. For example - "STFU ALREADY!" doesn't work. It just makes them talk even more about how upset they are and how much of a meanie they think you are and how they will never talk to you ever again. This goes on for days and days.

I've had one person spend two months telling how they'll never ever talk to me again.

Well, I made it half-way down page two
Even if the options were valid, I hope I haven't met everyone I'm going to meet SL and RL in order to come to a conclusion yet.

And bringing RL friends into SL probably disqualifies me from answering anyway.

There! I posted .... back in a fortnight.

I consider everyone my friend until they prove me wrong. Then I still consider them my friend because everyone needs one.

That's sweet. Maybe I'm just a caloused old fart but I don't think I could leave myself open like that anymore. I hope you never have reason to change.

The results so far are interesting.