A note & a question
Jan. 20th, 2013 04:23 pmNote: 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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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 metbasingstoke 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?)
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?)