A note & a question

[laurajv]

Note: I've been leaving some hockey-related comments in ppl's spaces, & thought maybe I should say -- I'm a slash person, and a hockey person, but not a hockey slash person. I mean, I'm fine with hockey slash, I'm glad people have a fandom they love, I find some pairings amusing or interesting, I do not wish to harsh any buzzes & I'm not gonna freak out about anything, but like -- I grew up in Pittsburgh under the banner of Mario Lemieux, so that's where I am coming from, fannishly, in this space. Just a totally different headspace with a different, but overlapping, set of interests, and so my comments will tend to occur in the overlap.

And now the question. I had an interesting short convo w niqaeli about using the term "real life" or "RL" to mean...yeah see this is where the definition gets tricky, EXACTLY. She feels that using it devalues online friendships, which is 100% correct, I think, but my problem is that there isn't another term for it and so I default to "RL". People use "meatspace" (which I hate and is inaccurate) and "offline" (which I don't hate but which is inaccurate), and what I'm asking is: what word do you use, and why, and do you have any suggestions for me in this arena?

(I guess there's the argument to be made "why distinguish, if they are all friends" but I'm not talking just about friends here, but also there are a bunch of differences even if they ARE all friends. Like, most people reading this call me Laura JV or jacquez or jac, all of which are perfectly fine names, but none of them are my legal name nor are any of them my primary usename; people who know me FROM offline spaces might know I'm "jacquez" -- like, lots of them follow me on Twitter, for example -- but they also know my primary usename because that's what they call me, how we were introduced, etc, and they can ASSUME they know my primary usename. So that's a fairly fundamental difference in how I relate to them -- like, there are plenty of from-online-spaces friends who know my legal name & primary usename, of course there are; I met basingstoke online ffs -- but no one assumes, meeting me in the online spaces I frequent, that they know that information. For me, this is like -- shockingly fundamental to the nature of the relationship. IDK, maybe it shouldn't be and I'm just turning into an old person?)

Comments

[musesfool]

I tend to use "offline" or "non-fannish" for friends I first met offline or non-fannishly, and generally I just use "fangirls" or "fannish" or "online" for fannish friends I've met online, though the latter is mostly only with my parents, who call my fannish friends "the people from the internet."

And I'm in the same space re: hockey - I've been a NY Rangers fan since I was 9, but I don't engage in it as a slash fandom - it just doesn't compute to me that way.

[laurajv]

Part of my problem is that a large number of my friends-from-physical-spaces are also fannish people and, because of post-university dispersal, some of them I've only interacted with online for, like, 15 years. But they are still...not "online" friends, really, nor are they "offline", nor "non-fannish" -- they're just in a different category from "people I met online & with whom interaction has remained primarily online even if we happen to have met a few times". (And of course there are boundary-crossing people, like Bas, who I met online and then we discovered we had friends in common and then she moved in with me for a while, and my friend C who went to the same university I did at the same time and we dated roommates and best friends and yet somehow NEVER MANAGED TO MEET and only interacted online for AGES but she was never an "online friend" she was a "physical friend I had not met yet" somehow? IDEK.)

[goss]

For me "RL" vs. "fandom" works really well specifically because of where I am located. I'm on a Caribbean island thousands of miles away from *anyone* I interact with in fandom, so there are no crossovers at all happening between those two parts of my life.

ETA: I've met and hung out with several fannish people over the years, so I feel really weird using the term "online" friends. So I stick with "fandom" for those who I met through fandom, and "RL" meaning everyone else.

[laurajv]

I kind of like "fandom friend" better than "online friend"! Because I have fannish friends that I (know from/interact with primarily in) offline spaces, but they are not my friends-within-my-fandoms in most cases.

Still has the "RL" problem for me, though. WORDS WHY YOU SO DIFFICULT.

[telesilla]

I honestly don't differentiate between online/fandom and offline/real life friends. Knowing people's names isn't a big deal for me; I've got one very good friend I met online and have met face to face many times and I still don't know her real name. It helps that all my "real life" friends--and my family, for that matter--know about the fandom thing so that divide isn't there either.

[ratcreature]

Hmm. I never felt a problem with RL as term. I can see the issue, but in practice more often than not it is used to refer to some unwelcome event/intrusion/obligation that interrupted more fun fannish/online activity. That is, there isn't an implied assumption that "real" is "true" or "better" opposed to some "fake" online thing, but rather that something is a limiting factor to voluntary play.

[vass]

"local", if they are local.

[elynross]

Whether I make a distinction depends on context. Mostly, I just say "my friend X", without designating on or offline. But when it's relevant or needful, when I'm online I'll talk about f2f (face-to-face) friends, and when offline, I'll talk about online friends. Those both seem to refer to they "space" in which I either met people, or mostly interact with them, without having any potential pejorative sense or implication. I think. Maybe.

[laurajv]

For me, a big part of the problem comes in with people like, say, my college roommate. We haven't lived in the same town for 14 years or so, and we see each other MAYBE 2x a year in a good year. But she's not an "online friend". She's just...not. But nor is she local, or face-to-face, or offline. Calling her any of those things would misstate the nature of the relationship.

Language. So annoying.

[elynross]

Well, that's what I meant by it depending on context. Mostly for me she'd just be a friend, but if I were talking to online folks, and I needed to distinguish, she'd still be a f2f-type friend for me, since that's how you met. But I don't find that most of the time I need to delimit online/offline, any more than I've usually had to delimit in town/out-of-town/long distance friends.

[copracat]

Ultimately I think those differences will be erased. I mean, offline I know people from school, from Uni, from different jobs, from other hobbies and activities, my family. They all know me differently. Just like online there are people I share fandoms with, people I share fannish styles with (eg femslashers, dreamwidth users), people I've shared activity with (beta-reading, volunteering, co-modding) so... I can see what you're getting at, maybe. I tend to divide the groups into people I met through offline friends and people I met through online friends, so fans I meet at fan gatherings are 'online' and people I meet via twitter, for example, but because of a contact with an 'offline' friend are 'offline', even if I have only ever talked to them via twitter.