I think that's crap. I continue to make friends online and socialize with them in meatspace. It's never exactly the same as b.org, but each community has its own flavor. The internet is different; it's a hell of a lot bigger and busier. I think the social networking tools available to us now might make it easier to find like-minded people, but who knows, maybe that's because I've been around long enough that I know how and where to look.

ITA. I was online and chatting in communities by '94, but I didn't find b.org until '04.

So. Freakin. Cool.

I think it's funnier when you know that I grew up in Westchester County. The suburbs are so subversive.

I'd love to see the orbital paths of those stars mapped out.

I think the social networking tools available to us now might make it easier to find like-minded people

I agree. People I've known for 20 years are finally finding both people they already know on the internet, and using things like meetup.com to meet similarly minded strangers.

But 10 years ago they'd have looked at me funny, because they didn't spend time online.

I was online and chatting in communities by '94, but I didn't find b.org until '04.

I was online and chatting by '96, found b.org around '00, Livejournal in '03. The majority of my social circle are people I've met online, whether I've known them for 10 years or 3 months.

People I've known for 20 years are finally finding both people they already know on the internet, and using things like meetup.com to meet similarly minded strangers.

Or, in my case, when I brought meatspace friends into the internet.

One of the things that I love about the internet is that no matter where I am, I have a friend in 50 miles. When I first started doing a lot of work travel, I would bring work to do so I wouldn't get bored at night. I quickly stopped doing that because it was useless since I was always meeting/getting reacquainted with people from my threads.

Got the recipe for that 'shine?

He took it to his grave. He used to pay my mother a nickle a jar for washing the mason jars he sold it in. He was also quite proud that "nobody ever went blind drinkin' his recipe."

The b.org was different from other communities even at our conception, I think. I mean, when I came to you, I was coming straight from the gaming world, which was full of preteens and crazed obsessive people. It was fine, too, and I made long term friends in that environment too, just different sorts of relationships.

I think it's less an artifact of time and more something specific to us. Which is why I fight so fiercely to protect Us.

The book is a love song to a specific community, but I don't think we're antiques. I think we were weirdos then and we are now and it's nifty.

I've been pretty lucky, or maybe it's just pretty particular, because the only boards I've been so involved with that I actually met people IRL from them were both composed of (mostly) grown-ups who (a) are articulate, and (b) are mostly geeks about one thing or another.

The Buffistas are one, of course, and the other was the Fourth Turning board, dedicated to the Strauss/Howe generational theory of history. Both boards are filled with people from all walks of life (FT had everyone from a prof at the Naval War College whom I've since seen featured on a National Geographic doc on Sacco and Vanzetti to grade school teachers and Microsoft millionaires) who are passionate about at least one subject, if not more, and can discourse on said subject(s) at length, using proper grammar.

I socialised with people from USENET, non-Buffy people from TT and WX. I also participated a lot in a technical board called Builder's Buzz. When the site that hosted it (shades of the Bronze, I guess) decided they didn't want it anymore, well, it just died. It tried to move to another platform, but somehow it wasn't enough. I drifted away and every time I drifted back it was paler and paler.

I don't feel that b.org is too different except in it being the one I call home. I've seen people socialise over World of Warcraft or many other strange things that I figure all the stories are different, but they're about the same thing.

I think that's crap. I continue to make friends online and socialize with them in meatspace.

Yeah, I think the reviewer is made of stupid.

Given that people continue to make friends and meet each other through various online communities, like, oh, I dunno...FUCKING DAILY KOS?

Seriously, I don't mind people who think I'm a crap writer, but I do mind people talking smugly out of their ass without doing a simple google search.