How clear is your divide between ‘real life’ and ‘internet life’?

[HollyThirtyFive]

I still like to keep my real life different from my online life in a way, but its not so much anymore. iCraig is right, its just a different method of communication.

I remember on my first meet, me and my friend matt who posted on ocuk thought it would be a laugh and said if its rubbish we'll just go out in London..however it turned out we had a great time so I came back for more :-) although I do get quite nervous sometimes. Aside from this forum I have actually met two of my bestest friends through the internet. Peppi, I met through a Brighton music forum 2 years ago for a band, my first "internet meet" and a more recent internet meet is my guitarist Neil. We get on so amazingly well, and iv known him only a few months.

The people I've met on here are the nicest, safest bunch of people ever!! Its just a shame we all live so far apart!

[Feek]

Originally Posted by nige

Is it possible to keep your internet life and real life separate, or will they inevitably collide? If you are (like many here) a meet-goer, what was it that made you cross (perhaps the final divide) and meet up with those crazy people from the internet?

I've tried as much as I can to keep them seperate but the line does eventually fade and it becomes pretty much impossible. I'm pretty much the same person online as I am when you meet me fact to face (I think) except I do still try and keep personal stuff away from the online side.

Regarding meeting people from the internet, well this goes back a long time for me to well before anyone really had heard of the internet! I used to be very active on some usergroups on Micronet 800 which was the general consumer side of BT's online Prestel service and we'd get together for meets. I got involved with the running of The Midnight Micronetters Club and we organised a tour around the country over a two week period in a campervan meeting members in the evenings for beer and giggles. This was 21 years ago! Not much has changed really

[Pheebs]

I'm a cross between dym and piggy! My online life is this forum, GF, possibly facebook (which is much of this forum and other friends only) and that's it. I'm therefore amidst friends and I am a very open person really!

I canny help it. Words and mumbo jumbo fall out of my mouth (or finger tips) and I tell people whatever I think/feel/whatevers happening in my life!

There isn't a distinguishable line as far as I see! It's all a big (normally drunken) blur

[Dee]

It was a New Years resolution of mine to make a meet in 2006, come February that year, I had already acheived it, and like Pebs, made some very close mates along the way

We are never far from the internet in our house, and the fact we have Lopkat as neighbours, we cant escape it!!!!

[Jonny69]

Originally Posted by Pheebs

I'm a cross between dym and piggy!

Pics please

I'm glad I met up with some of you guys. Like Holly my first meetup was the OcUK London meet and I really didn't know what to expect. I figured I could always disappear if I needed to but yeah, everyone except Dym was quite normal

[Matblack]

The internet is just an extention of who I am in real life, its like a phone for the people I know to keep in touch and like a pub to meet people who I would like to get to know and possibly be friends with.

Before joining OcUK I didn't have much of a friendship base, just a few people locally, now I have loads of friends up and down the country

MB

[Daz]

Originally Posted by Betty

We are never far from the internet in our house

Indeed not Laptop, PC, TV, radio and games consoles - all online, and all mostly used to communicate with friends and family, be that by email, forum or parading the cats to Feek over Xbox Live ().

To answer the OP I tend to think on the internet split in two - BD and my friends, and the rest of it. My internet life is squarely in the former and to that end I'm not much different here than I am in real life - and that extends to what I share about myself. The rest of it is simply I resource I rely on heavily, I tend not to see my 'internet life' existing there.

[Treefrog]

Hmm, internet friends are just RL friends that I don't happen to see on a regular basis, that's all. Whether we talk in the pub, on forums, at a meet, on the phone or by text is just how we happen to be communicating at that time, nothing more. That's my take on it anyway.

As for crossing the final divide, it was the Towers meet in '05. Having chatted in threads on OcUK I definitely wanted to meet up with some of these nutters and see if they were the same IRL. Utch is just down the road - a nice ride out down the old A50 too - and I could always leave and not meet up at Alton Towers the next day if anything didn't feel right. I enjoyed meeting everyone in the pub and woke up the next morning in my own bed, with both kidneys and not married to a Russian shot-putter, so things seemed to be going okay One of my better decisions.

To the stage that, before the camping meet '05 I deliberately told people that I was going camping in South Wales with some people off the internet - just to see their reaction
Evil of me, I know

[Justsomebloke]

The only people i have met are those through a deal on M&M, so i haven't crossed that line in that respect yet.
As for my past i would rather it wasn't available to any Tom Dick or Harriet but if it became public knowledge then i would just have to live it with it the same as i do irl.
I am far to basic a guy to hide behind a front & am who i am anywhere & everywhere including the Interweb.
Also there are people on Oc & on my Facebook & MSN that know me irl even my own scatty family are about here & there