Freckles & Doubt

aargh. Both of you are going "they're the same!" when I think you possibly mean "they're equally real, powerful and important." I agree with the latter, but not with the former. I don't think you can collapse online communication and real-world, in-the-flesh communication into a category where they're the same, because they aren't: they're equally real, powerful and important, but they work differently as a result of the way in which their power resides in either the flesh or the whizzing around of electrons. For me, "virtual" as a label means "not connected to bodily reality". The problem with labels such as "real" or "actual" to describe communication connected to bodily reality is that both terms have abstract as well as literal implications, and the abstract ones certainly apply to online communication. But I would have thought it would have been fairly clear from context that I mean the distinction between "actual" and "virtual" to apply to their different constructions rather than their abstract implications. You guys just like to nit-pick :>.