I spent the 1990s in disastrous relationships with people I met in RL. Aren't I smart?
Anyway, last year I was hopping around different chat rooms and I met this person who turned out to be completely wonderful. After an appropriate time we met, decided that we were both sane and liked each other, and are now about to marry.
I believe that meeting people online has one advantage over face-to-face meetings--you are not concerned about anything except
what the person is saying. Listen to what a person says (or types) and you can figure out their character; even the best liars can keep up pretenses for only so long. It all comes down to honest communication; remember--people carried on relationships via letters before the telephone. How is that different than the Internet? My own grandparents stayed together even though they saw each other only about 4 months out of 5 years during WWII, mostly because of the occasional letter.
In short, there is no real difference between RL and the Internet anymore; both are equally risky. We could meet tomorrow and I could make up all sorts of stories about myself. How would you know?
But then again, why would I?
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An intelligent mind is the key to the universe.
The most distressing thing about practicing magic is the fact that even the most learned sorcerers cannot accurately describe what magic *is*....