I've encountered at least one usenet community (soc.culture.african.american) which had a similar effect. As for web communities, it happened all over TT, didn't it? It might be continuing/renewing/happening anew at DriveWeSaid and The Perfect World. And those are just places I've been, and I don't get out that much. At least not to new places.

I don't think it's rare enough to be left out of the article.

the far away person COULDN'T do those things, its a different sort of relationship entirely.

You sent me bagels to cheer me. msbelle sent me cookies. Sometimes internet friends send me flowers. Chicken soup is a shit example. The only reason people don't send it is because it doesn't travel well. My mom is 3000 miles away, and I'm closer to her now than I was when i lived with her. Her care packages filled with tea and goofy t-shirts that I'd never wear and some crappy thing she found at a second-hand store ARE chicken soup. Same exact effect.

So we do those things.

Shit, we brought Nilly here from ISRAEL, and coordinated a five city tour of America. As much as I like to think we're innovators, I can't believe we're teh only ones to have gone to such lengths for one of our fellow internet axe murderers.

Sorry. I'm passionate (overly) about this stuff, these days.

The only reason people don't send it is because it doesn't travel well.

Come to think of it, if I knew a diner in your neighborhood that delivered and that you loved chicken soup that would totally happen.

Pre-telephone (and cheap telephone) people had relationships that consisted almost entirely of passionate correspondence. And then that just about died completely... until the interbunny revived it in a more instant form. I think that is the more apt comparison.

Oh, the nature of my pants notwithstanding, I don't mean sexually passionate.

Exactly! I just told someone the other day that Emerson was just a low-tech blogger, and that Jefferson and Hamilton worked out the Constitution and Bill of Rights over a low tech flame-war. Same shit, different century.

Even though it doesn't ship well, there has even been Buffista soup conveyance -- when TB took pho to Hec's ex-GF when she was new in Portland and didn't know anyone (including TB).

And Allyson, you're right to be passionate about this stuff.

For about a generation "correspondence" went away. And then it came back like blazes. I wonder about the books that will be published in a decade or two containing the emails and IMs between two noteable politicans or artists. Or even a group of them.

Yup - when we got our hands on printing presses, we made handbills and booklets. It's the technology that's changed, not the behavior.

I have in my head that someone has done some sort of study documenting the social evolution of the typical online community, and it includes a "hey, we should meet in meat space" phase.

Plus, I bet if I asked -t (which I am not), I would have chicken soup at my door in a little over 2 hours.