Stop pretending there’s a difference between “online” and “real life”

by ANNALEE NEWITZ

As we continue forward into the twenty-first century, we need to take seriously the fact that every aspect of our lives has an online component, whether we like it or not. There is no such thing as an exclusively online movement or social experience. Our real lives, what we do in the streets, are wired into computer networks. The way those networks are run and the rules that govern them are explicitly political.

That means our civic responsibilities don't end the instant we log into Snapchat or Reddit. What we do online matters. It can change the course of people's lives and shift the balance of power in a nation. The sooner we take responsibility for what that means, the better.


Continue reading at https://arstechnica.com/staff/2016/12/stop-pretending-theres-a-difference-between-online-and-real-life/

I don't mind the bit you posted about civic responsibility.

The rest of the article doesn't ride well with me...

Nothing makes this more obvious than the little chunks of online identities we all carry in our pockets all the time.

Speak for yourself. I'm Organic

Our homes, our baby monitors, our cars,

Nope, Nope, Nope.

angry mobs driving people off Twitter with death threats, or maniacs swatting Twitch gamers. The point is, people are harmed in a fundamental way by online trolls.

Don't be online. It's quite optional. You can access the great majority of necessary information without having an online "person" that can be attacked or or abused in the way the article suggests.



Another big difference between online and real life: It costs very little to add another article to a website, so authors don't have to work as hard to get their rambling published

From one who has already taken responsibility in this aspect I feel the authors weight. In my study I find nothing " exclusive" . ( I am a subscriber to the idea that ever human has the ability to reach their full potential. ) This place here is my only social media. I know how do I survive right.... But I do and its not surviving its called living. There are a lot of avalible ideas that keep or attention. Being ...wary... As our common idea here and can be very helpful to remeber that. Lives to a Jedi matter ... Not labels...what u do , say...matters...no mater location. Thank u for a good reminder Bro John. May the Force continue to find you and thanks for sharing with! May you find blessing for blessing me and my family with this .

This is something that we've talked about before. It isn't a "new" phenomenon nor is it exclusively electronic...

The article brings up a pretty interesting subject which many (if not 'most') of us do not think about, that being just how much computer networks have become an inextricable part of the foundations of civilisation. I'm sorry, James, but taking part in civilisation is not all that optional. Surely, we can decide whether to discuss things with people on social media, but we cannot move to the moon (and indeed one would have to probably go farther away than that) which would be the only way to get off that foundation : to totally remove oneself from the civilisation that we are all dependent on. Even if one does not have a mobile, or a computer, one still works somewhere - or has a living revenue from some source -, a bank account, buys the things one needs and many things one does not ... All these are dependent on the information net that infrastructure has been shifting into for the last couple of generations.

I was thinking about this with regard to the job that I currently do : it could go back to being entirely written on paper and everything being more or less 'matter' (please - let's not get off into the virtual nature of 'matter' just yet ... that's a marginally related topic). But then, it is a public, cultural establishment that is utterly dependent on financing from the city, département and région, as well as recettes from particular contribuables (the ones using the service), which are all part of that on-line, networked, cyber-representational structure. Even material resources as simple as pens and paperclips are ordered, tracked, accepted and payed for with a very heavy element of on-line transactions.

This is not a moral issue. We can't get off into a catch-22 paralysing moral relativistic circle jerk about how this all infringes on our liberty. As technology becomes more refined and precise, we have to be more clever about the surveillance of how it is used. Take for instance, do we want un-monitored private 3D printers churning out unregistered ceramic fire-arms ? Actually, this particular danger and the ones mentioned in the article are probably the least sinister of our digital-world risks.

What I personally consider the most horrible risk of all is that we just start considering one another as sims. We build relationships with on-line personalities - some of whom we actually meet and can know in off-line life (hence the fuzzy distinction) - and because of the quasi-constant electronic connectivity, we get hypnotised into regarding our interactions with human beings as apps that we can choose or not to run. It is an assault on our sincerity and our honesty -- not to mention that it can inflate our own egos to utter dissipation. Much of our social organisation - even from before the virtual enhancement - has been conventionalised in the post-modern mentality wherein the re-presentation and its sign-value is more important than what the 'present'-ation (if possible) and its symbolic-value might be.

In other, more simple terms, we're running the risk of giving our most cherished human relationships (including those with enemies) up to the same reality as the characters of video games. Certainly, for a while, that has been a 'safer' way of crafting a more comfortable identity ... it most likely won't stay that 'safe' (hackers and viruses notwithstanding). We need to stop protecting ourselves with 'safe' relationships and start living through some of the stuff in our humanity that hurts, without which we stop living human lives.

That, to my mind (fevered though it may be) is the more hazardous risk that we encourons by making a segregation between "on-line" and "off-line" Life. There is none of that : social life, professional life, private life, love life ... that is all codswabble -- it's all just Life. Without recognising this, it won't matter if we're in a Stone Age or an Information Age, we'll be just as deadly to one another as dead ourselves ...

Sorry to be so glum.

To me online isnt real life, while my words are here on the screen, whatever I put online isnt who I am totally.
While lots of things are online the majority of my actually life has nothing to do with computers or online interactions.
This thr people I meet online will never be 'real' to me in a way that people I meet in life are and no offence but those I have met from interactions on the net are not always the personality they present.

It would be healthier and better to keep in mind that words arent a person get outside and actually live

Saying that I wouldnt put people down online because I still understand that there is a person behind the screen, I just dont feel anything for them like I would if we met offline where I could see, hear and get to know them.

Sword Art Online

Its a pretty good representation of "Online Vs Offline"

One part in particular that brings it home....Online, your avatar can die a thousand times over. But it will never be like dying for the first and only time in real life.

Simply put...It dosn't matter how advanced and integrated modern technology brings our persona's in an Online or Offline environment. We could be fully submerged into it just like Sword Art Online and never have the same experience or expectations as we would Offine.

Naturally that does not give us an excuse to purposefully forget our manners and Conducts.

But I simply must insist. There IS a difference.

One more, then I'm off to another, more tangible part of my virtual-ness ...

Elizabeth and Trisskar, what both of you have remarked is true from quite particular points of view. When we enlarge the topic though, we come up with a dilemma that is very similar to the chicken and the egg question : are our lives becoming "virtual" because we're dependent on - perhaps living in - the technology that we've developed ( "we" as a society, that is ), or did we (ibid) as a society develop this technology just because we have been slipping away from the real experience of living for already a very long time ?

Even what we present to people in face-to-face meetings is often a re-presentation of particular degrees of specific values (sign-value, to be sure) in such combinations as to elicit desired responses from others engaged in the same theatre. Of course it is evident that an on-line avatar's "death" can occur again and again because there is nothing really dying there. It is merely a data-set that can be re-booted, re-run ... and where different variables are introduced, different choices made (yet all within the framework of possibilities of the system) then the virtual experience can be re-experienced according to multiple variations. As it were, the only "death" we can somewhat vicariously experience is that of an avatar because we will no longer be living to experience our own physical, organic one. That is just an experience we won't "have". We will die, but it will not be an experience in the évolutif sense of the term.

So, perhaps we ought to consider how we experience other things -- the things which indeed alter our world-views. That is why I'm concerned by how we may be seeing others as sims, or applications. This is, I feel, a more costly risk (with little payoff) than actually dying. It is a risk whereby, if not understood, may strengthen our "avatars" on-line at the expense of our off-line "avatars". If you take my meaning there. We do not want to have better imaginary lives than truly lived ones.

The thing is, I'm curious as to what point we haven't already - for a few generations now - already been seeing (real) Life as very much like that ? We seem to have established a lot of parameters by which we "define" normal and abnormal, good and bad, moral and immoral, all of this barely afloat on the quicksand of "culture" ... in other words, we've got a lot off value-judgements that determine our choices that we feel quite proudly "free" to make. We can always come up with a convincing (to ourselves anyway) justifying argument for explaining why we have made particular choices concerning others, but - like you said - it is difficult to re-run the programme and choose otherwise. In that way, we end up changing human, living relationships about the same way as we change telephone operators -- based on who has the better deal and what we can get from the "service". Others, even intimate ones, have become "virtual" ; to re-run the programme and choose otherwise (or not) can only be done by changing the 'Others'.

Materialism offers this up as a viable conduct. It seems sort of ironic that this particular - quite refutable - model of the world would end up de-materialising to perpetuate its value system. I think that it is going to prove to be like enantiodromia on crack ... :lol:

The author of the article has some rather bias views due to there own reliance of technology and the interdependency which technology provides any user the feeling of inclusiveness. The internet however in my opinion is a landscape of infinite strife. It is chaos theory personified. While in some ways it promotes inclusiveness and Unity, that of course is a matter speculative thought. To quote Charlie Chaplin in the Great dictator


"We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all."

During his time, this was a factor that was recognized during the industrial revolution. Without adherence to the virtues of fortitude and temperance we would be consumed by the lacking. Today we see how the internet follows no pattern other than that of strife. One man's hero is another man's villain. It has allowed the fearful a place to air their ideologies. A place where unity can be found, be it whatever the cause. It allows for stances that illicit all humanly emotions available.

Outside the amalgamation of a song lacking harmony, in the real world there is a much differing set of rules and governing principles. To speak plain, people are more reserved to some degree. Those who would attack and prey on others find themselves without the power to do such. The opposite can be said of those who feel passionately on things not being so vocal on said subject due to physical confrontation.

As time goes by, we will see however the discourse of the internet become more and more real in the outer world. We are already seeing it. People watch concerts, sunsets, and births through the screen of phone rather than creating natural neurons to form memories. This will cause further thought on how our lives are content for others to partake in for enjoyment rather than what it means to be us. We will also see a jubilation of people encouraging all types of emotions, The sad thing being more relevant to pain and discomfort rather than joy and celebration.

The difference between digital and real world is slowly decaying away to a new social norm. I however find solace in the fact that much like real life, it is the responsibility of the person on how they choose to interact with it. The Author of the Op-Ed piece truly feigned their own ignorance in disinformation and the masses believing it. It takes the responsibility of the individual to seek out truth, and not necessarily what placates their own sense of security. The current sometimes runs strong and rapid.

I thank you Brother John for sharing this thought invoking article and its affect it has had on us today.

I leave you with another piece of media to disseminate

Particular Points of View....Yes. But isn't that what you are doing as well? We can expand, broaden, and generalize ideals as far as we want...They are still limited within the particular mind frame divided between you and me, as we both think, feel, and understand things very differently. We could spend all day breaking down singularities of events, things, constructs and well....Particular points of views haha

Everything we encounter in life will have an influence in our future engagement past said encounter. Especially when it is repetitive. Taking online environments and correlating them with real life events (The Sims effect as your calling it) is a natural reaction. Just like taking Offline expectations of our social reality and assuming that goes for everyone you chat with online ((Culture barriers))

It is only natural for bleed overs to occur.

This does not make the two the same though. It just makes our "Cultural Trends" change.

In other, more simple terms, we're running the risk of giving our most cherished human relationships (including those with enemies) up to the same reality as the characters of video games. Certainly, for a while, that has been a 'safer' way of crafting a more comfortable identity ... it most likely won't stay that 'safe' (hackers and viruses notwithstanding). We need to stop protecting ourselves with 'safe' relationships and start living through some of the stuff in our humanity that hurts, without which we stop living human lives.

I can get on board with that.

Growing up on the mean streets of the real world, grazed knees and all - I like to believe rightly or wrongly, that my cherished human relationships are, within the bounds of good taste, "honest" and "real"

I don't doubt the skills, and experience, of the "new kids" may be very different. For all I know, they feel about face-to-face (with the smells, frictions and all the other good stuff that comes with it) relationships as I do about text based ones.

Which as you say, could (and probably already does) cause some curious events to occur.


What was my other thought?

Oh yes, real life isn't real life.

We have to be careful not to romanticise the "real world" in comparison to the "online world"

I spend a great deal of my time (let's make up a number and say 74%) in the "real world" faking it. I have a job, I shop at...shopping places. I have to meet all sorts of government regulatory bullshit in order to be allowed to live in this country.
All of these require me to act as appropriate for the circumstances.

It's not devilry, it is, as someone said, civilisation - Imagining the real world is more "pure" than the the interwebs is something someone who never lived in the real world would do.


(This next bit is just me having giggle-fits)

Even if one does not have a mobile, or a computer, one still works somewhere - or has a living revenue from some source

Not necessarily, but for me that's true, and, oh look, you even mentioned my income sources in your post :laugh:

Take for instance[...] un-monitored private 3D printers[...]

All these are dependent on the information net [...]infrastructure.

Figurational Sociology? Truth of Art versus Truth of Nature.... life imitating art; mimesis!? Clearly there is a huge entertainment value in the technology and its cross-talking over into the serious side, but I"m not sure there is anything anyone could do that is both constructive and effective in countering the natural progression of it all unless it can be predictive and exert influence early enough in progression of the problem. Augmented Reality is going to make things difficult perhaps but as much as it can reinforce existing bias, it can also distract and allow awareness to broaden - people do like discovering new things, especially if its painless or entertaining.

Indeed I think the virtual reality will exceed physical reality eventually, in much the same way dreaming reality can exceed physical reality - partially, but to such an extent it constitutes a 'place' alongside physical reality - because where it works it goes beyond the limits of physical reality. I know my dreaming reality is often better then my waking one, and same with virtual in some regards. So perhaps they all can work together to provide a better coverage over the concept of fulfillment. So the question might be how do we define fulfillment best! At the same time you would not want them to conflict or create vulnerabilities in each other.

So while governments and industry need to work to ensure security is sufficient at all levels, it is the user who also has to exert their own conscious awareness into decision making to understand where practical limitations should exist in using different domains of awareness. Such that it is stupid to have a nice dream while driving your car!! Or in the same way for making electoral decisions based on which person you think is popular with your friends. These things need to be compartmentalized and understood in accurate terms of reference (which is why I like mandatory voting because it avoids making it a popularity contest to motivate the larger poll attendance).

As Alex pointed out you don't die when you die online, so it serves no-one to confuse the language. Yes online is real, but its not real 'life' IMO. Life involves your body, so using your mobile device or computer is the 'online life' which happens to be real - the sitting at the desk with proper posture (yea right!!), the walking across traffic not noticing because your head is buried in Instagram, that is 'online life'.... or real online life as its a type of real life activity. What you do online is then the online activity. The activity you do online is not life, the doing of it is but not the stuff being done - but it does impacts life at least in regards to how you conduct your online life (not online activity). but as mentioned also it does often a lot more as these days it is a platform to interact with other societal functions like finance etc. I guess I feel it might be natural for this topic to jump on questioning the 'real', when I think its more about the 'life' in understanding a topic of is online life real life. So I do make distinctions, but try to recognize the nature of the activity, its platforms and domains and relational characteristics. Just to be properly confusing in clearing it up, IMO.

Online activity could be considered in the same discourse as long-range weaponry in warfare; close combat makes things personal. Engaging your enemy in face-to-face combat requires that you see the results of your actions. Not trying to belittle the horrors of war in earlier times, but with the advent of long-range weaponry, war has become impersonal. Enemies (or the person / people that you were told are your enemy) can be killed by the push of a button. What the other fraction believes to be the enemy is what you have made them believe through various means of communication. The fact is: oftentimes, the fractions, in reality, don't know anything about each other at all. What is killed isn't a person - it's a representation of a person, an idea.

Online communications as we know it today works similarly. Whom we perceive online isn't the person who actually sits behind the electronic communication device. It's a representation of that person. The degree of offset between the actual person and the online representation depends on the real person's willingness to convey his or her personality truthfully (or not) online. There are several difficulties arising from this:

- It's often impossible to tell how realistic an online representation is. Interacting with an avatar is risky for that reason, especially when various degrees of realism of representation are involved amongst interacting avatars.

- When others interact with an online representation, the real person behind it tends to forget that others do just that: namely react to an online representation that the person had created rather than to a real person. A representation can never include all aspects of a real person. While a real person may have flaws that are simply ignored or even welcomed in face-to-face interaction because other aspects of that person make up for them, an online representation can perhaps not achieve the same feat, leading in unexpected reactions that the real person finds hard to deal with

- in real life, a person is often forced to interact socially, to work on social skills, to confront issues with other people. Online, it's easy to avoid problems and the representations of people. As personal growth often involves the development and application of problem solving skills, especially younger people who may not have a full set of these skills yet are in danger of losing certain capabilities to deal with things in real life if they predominately interact through online representation.

Technology as we know it today doesn't allow us to truthfully represent ourselves online yet. This may be possible in the future, but until then, there's a huge difference between "online" and "real life" - a difference that is often unclear and hard to grasp for individuals. It should also not be precluded that every person has the capability to really grasp the reality of technology today. One example would be drone warfare - something that may to be the logical combination of long-range warfare and information technology / online representation to the West but is considered extremely cowardly and incomprehensible for those who are most of the target of such weaponry.

btw. I apologize for the poor language of parts of my post - I wrote that on a tablet PC this morning and wasn't able to improve on it later

Preface, I only skimmed the responses so far. I am responding to the OP.

As with all things there must be a balance. Yes there are real world consequences for actions taken online and people need to understand that. Things like "swatting" (calling in fake anonymous tips that your gamer opponent is a terrorist so that the SWAT team storms their house) and online death threats that people would never make face to face are terrible and need to be viewed with the same reality as if they were delivered face to face, in my opinion.

But we still can't pretend that being online and being "in real life" are the same. If it was then long distance romantic relationships would work just as often as other relationships. That is not the case.

That is not to say that online in offline carry different weight, just that they are not the same thing. To believe otherwise is foolish. That level of belief is what has led to the rise of hashtag activism and Social Justice Warriors. People believing that they can click and 'like' their way into being a good person or accomplishing things with their life when all they're doing is nothing. Real good can be done from behind a keyboard and screen but it almost never done without some work away from them as well and it is never done by simply sharing a Facebook photo.

As for the "mask" concept, appearing different online from offline, that is always true of any situation. People at work see me with a different mask than people at the comic book store, or the dojo, or at any number of other places and social situations. The closest a person can get to seeing "the whole, real me" is my wife because she also happens to be present at lots of those other things. Those masks don't have to be very different but to pretend they're not at least a little different is foolish. Everyone adapts to the situation they are in a little, that includes both online and offline.

tl;dr - They are different, but they can overlap and affect each other because all things are connected. Hashtag activism is useless. People act differently in different situations.

I've made a few great friends online, people I've never met offline, people who understand me and know me to the core more than many of my offline friends.

The only thing the internet grants us is a sense of anonymity, which enables us to reinvent ourselves in whichever way we choose. Some people hide behind this cloak of anonymity to act however their whims might move them; others use it as an opportunity for self-disclosure without fear of judgement.

In that sense, the online scenery can feel more real than the offline one, where in the latter some might succumb to the fear of judgement and social ostracizing, to put on their masks, while only being "true" online. Others might do exactly the opposite.

The Internet is simply a tool. It does not create an alternate reality. It's each user that determines how they make use of this tool. But there is no real separation between offline and online worlds. That's purely a matter of perspective.

I saw something the other day that was meant to be humorous, but struck me as somewhat frightening.

"As children we were told not to get into cars with strangers. We were also told to be very cautious and careful while using the internet. As adults, we use the internet to literally summon a stranger and then we gladly get into their car."

Online enterprise and interaction has fundamentally changed our "real life" behaviors. We put complete faith in machines and strangers when we order goods and services online and this is now normal. We don't rely on the local pharmacist or our trusted mechanic so much anymore. We plug our cars into a computer that tells us what is wrong and we can order medications online and have them delivered to us.

My brother was recently diagnosed with bronchitis via a webcam by a doctor he had never met who then submitted a prescription electronically to the drug store down the street from my brother's house. There was nothing strange about this interaction to him.

E-Harmony and other dating sites were once considered a place for the ugly, defective or hopelessly lonely to find others like them with whom they could settle. This is no longer the case. Online relationships may be just as likely to end up in a successful "real relationship" as meeting someone in the pub. Possibly more so.

The relatively recent emergence of "Identity Theft" is proof that our lives have become so reliant on electronic online activity that someone can literally become "you" online and do things that have very "real" consequences. There is no separating "online" from "real" when someone drains your bank account and you can no longer afford to pay your mortgage.

As our "online" lives and our "real" lives become more and more entangled, it is fair to say that the line is blurred and moving toward disappearing.

Senan wrote: "As children we were told not to get into cars with strangers. We were also told to be very cautious and careful while using the internet. As adults, we use the internet to literally summon a stranger and then we gladly get into their car."

I saw this the other day and literally laughed out loud at how true it is. I also refuse to use Uber and such things for that very reason.

Goken wrote:

Senan wrote: "As children we were told not to get into cars with strangers. We were also told to be very cautious and careful while using the internet. As adults, we use the internet to literally summon a stranger and then we gladly get into their car."

I saw this the other day and literally laughed out loud at how true it is. I also refuse to use Uber and such things for that very reason.

I agree... I use temporary email addresses, avoid sites like Facebook, and even use false information on sites still when signing up if it's not for something that definitely needs my real name. I had online fraud twice in a month last year despite all of my efforts to prevent it (I'm pretty uptight about that kinda thing) so 'online' me and 'real life' me definitely have different levels of disclosure.

"As children we were told not to get into cars with strangers. We were also told to be very cautious and careful while using the internet. As adults, we use the internet to literally summon a stranger and then we gladly get into their car."

As delightful as the idea of drawing pentagrams and summoning taxis is, this argument isn't much chop -

The assumption being, that as an adult we can assess the danger and react as required.
Another assumption is that people want money more than they want to do anything unseemly to you.



Every time you cross the road, you're assuming that I want to clean chunks out of my radiator less than I want to get where I am going. Part of being an adult is making that call

I saw this the other day and literally laughed out loud at how true it is. I also refuse to use Uber and such things for that very reason.

I will also assume you never collect your change from parking meters or vending machines then, as anyone who would use Uber to find victims, would also probably put used needles in places you put your flesh without looking


Humanity is dark and full of terrors

so 'online' me and 'real life' me definitely have different levels of disclosure.

It makes little difference.

For all the security systems and FaNcI$!@Aw0rbZ - With your full name and date of birth, a persuasive person can shit-talk their way through the customer service rep on the other end of the phone.

Most people don't bother, because the effort/risk/reward is no where near as good as running programmes and bulk online data theft activities - but don't ever feel secure.

Speaking from my own phenomenal (personal) experience, those who have "hurt" me the most have always been those who have done so in what you are calling "real" life. Flesh and blood people can lie, cheat and swindle just as well as some anonymous entity (who, incidentally has all the flesh and blood aspects of the less anonymous and distant ones) at a distance at a computer terminal.

The "getting into a car with a stranger" allegory is not too far from wrong. The extension of the analogy of wiping the chunks out of the radiator is applicable too. This because, there are thieves and swindlers in every market-place online and off. Moreover, in a world that has become "market" centred, almost all aspects of Life have become a market (e.g. online dating sites and nightclubs). What is worse though, and this is amplified by that risk that I was trying to allude to, is that whether we are ripping off people from across a counter or across the planet, it is the loss of our humanity and the acknowledgement of our shared humanity, that brings on (but also results from) the biggest rip-off of all ...

The stranger in the car, summoned or not, is dangerous, probably not because they actually set out to do harm, but because they believe the same lie they are re-telling. We've been "networked" for a much longer time than we've actually had networks... :whistle: