I don’t like the term “real life” used in the sense of “life spent in the physical presence of people as opposed to online”, because life spent at home online is just as “real” as life spent at the movies, at a desk on a conference call, or simply in front of the television.
What people say and do on the internet may not reflect how they are in front of others, but similarly, we all put on our work-faces and head to the office, becoming a completely different person than we are with friends on the weekends.
The internet provides a medium to be social with anonymity, which is both useful and frightening. It’s frighteningly useful. People have a forum to express themselves without (many apparent) repurcussions, and, because of this, we’ve discovered a lot about humans in a social context, both good and bad.
On the positive side, we have shared information, diverse communities, artistic expression, and new ideas from around the globe. Contrariwise, we’ve got disinformation, grieving and harassment, electronic vandalism (spam, viruses, etc.), and suppression of the underdog (despite that the underdog has often become the dark horse in history!), just like in the world offline.
The internet is the new pen and paper to which countless humans throughout history relied on for communication with the outside. It’s a modern telephone that we can use to call people halfway around the world, practically for free. This is 2008, and the internet is as real as it gets.
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