LJ and AIM

[redbird]

The Internet is a place where I can get into a conversation in which my answer to "How do you know David?" includes "I didn't even know his name was David."

Comments

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I was once IMed by someone I know in real life who also reads my LJ, asking me how I knew someone. She gave the person's realspace name, so I had no clue who she meant. We just read each other's LJs. Still, the world shrunk.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

In that sort of situation my answer would be I don't know Ralph, I only know Fnurtgrooble. After all in such cases where I only know somebody online I assume I'm only familiar with that small part of them they care to expose through LJ, AIM etc. This is generally not enough for me to believe I 'know' them.

[redbird]

It depends on how stringently you define "know." Any single interaction only exposes part of a person, and that's true face-to-face as well as online or in fanzines or correspondence.

By the standard you seem to be using, I don't know that many people, including many I've sat down over meals with. In fact, by that standard I'm not sure I know you.

As it happens, I don't think of myself as knowing rain_luong; I read Ozy and Millie and his LJ. But I knew papersky better before I'd been in the same room with her than I know the downstairs neighbor who drank tea and cried on my shoulder about her cat, and whose Hanukkah party I later attended.

Re:

[numbat.livejournal.com]

To me at least it's a matter of context too. Since I was assuming an online exchange my response is a touch more over the top than if I was asked this question in person about somebody I had met in person. Online it's much harder to gather incidental information that would allow me to assume (perhaps wrongly) that I have the basics of a picture.

For what it's worth I don't suppose you do know me. Not that this is an impediment to conversation.