I had my first phone call from a WDer this weekend. I've been PMing Mike (MonteCristo) for a couple months now, and he suggested a phone call. It was really cool, but it was also really weird. Mike is one of the many people on the WD who is dating someone else from the board, and actually talking to him, I got to thinking about the nature of internet 'relationships'. In my year and a half posting, I've gotten pretty good at reading the visual clues people put into their writing and the use of icons (and have even found it necessary to use here, it's hard for me to express something here without them, so I use the markup, even if you can't see the icon itself). When Mike's voice was not like I had imagined it to be, I realized how little those visual clues really mean. I also realized how much I'm different posting on the board than I am in person. One, being able to go back and read what I wrote and make changes before 'saying' it is invaluable. People I interact with in RL know that I am sometimes very good at putting my foot in my mouth, and it's a lot harder to do that posting. I can put a lot more thought into something before I say it. Two, somehow it's still got to get into my head that the people on the boards are actual people attached to real bodies. I've seen pictures; I know what people look like. But putting all that together into actual people hasn't happened for me yet. Maybe it won't until/if I actually meet them/talk to them. I hope I'm making sense to someone. In short, Mike feels more like a real person now that I've actually talked to him.