Hi Garf, thanks for taking the time out to think this topic so thoroughly....
Pleasure is pleasure, I agree, and connecting is also connecting, whether with a person physically present, or one sitting behind a machine.
Words do have the ability of conveying emotions, whether spoken or written. In fact, if they didn't, human beings would not be drawn to this medium.
"How do you distinguish pleasure as being real or not? It is just something you feel. And when you feel, may be whatever, it is ofcourse for real only."
However, I'm more convinced now than before that a balance needs to created between the virtual and the real world.
With your permission, I'd like to use our interaction as an example to illustrate my point.
Definitely, it feels nice to have a response to something that matters to me. I can also sense the depth of your insight, and the warmth in your words, which aim to put across your point, without offending me and other readers.
If this new found friendship sits comfortably with my other existing relationships, life is all hunky dory.
However, if I now start displacing some of those for a few moments of pleasure at the sight of a response from you, I stand the chance of losing out on a holistic relationship in favour of a uni dimensional one (purely objective observation, no offence meant).
If the effort and time I give to this space, when I have never met you, and maybe never will, and the importance I accord to your views and opinions, is far more than those of the people in my real world, I stand the chance of having a machine for company most nights and days.
As I gather more such friends, and my virtual world starts giving me more pleasure than the real world, I start withdrawing from actual speech, and the typed words become a more ready form of expression.
Because I can pick up and drop friendships more easily here than in real life, my efforts to meet up with people, spend evenings, holidays with them where I have limited or no access to my cyber friends, will slowly come down.
One great advantage to the shaping up of our personalities is the company of other beings like us. The daily interactions help us develop as individuals.
It is not possible to portray our true selves via a machine, as our interactions are at a conscious level. What about the subconscious messages that we give out, which can be perceived only by another living being, as a machine is not capable of detecting ambiguity?
Instead of progressing, we are bound to regress and lose our depth, and become plain and unidimensional if we do not balance our interactions with equal doses of real life interactions.
As to your point about people feeling rejected by the real world and taking to this form of connecting, I have a different perspective.
Real world relationships take more time and effort to develop than the virtual world ones.Because of this, the number of real friends and genuine carers for us may be very small.
In comparison, one comment can attract a large number, seemingly effortlessly!
There is also more giving involved than mere lip service in the real world, all very daunting for today's people, who have no time for such "trivia".
Take a good look at our parents/grandparents. They all have at least one friend who has understood then inside out, accepted them unconditionally, and stood by them through thick and thin, been almost like one of the family.
Can many people today claim to leave behind at least one such friend for their grandchildren?
