*tear*

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*I* am really sad right now because I've just deleted Teresa Naomi AND stoned.nerd from my blogroll since their blogs are gone. In fact I'm seriously tearing up a little here. I know that seems ridiculous because both of them are people I've never met but I grew to count on their musings, to save up moments in my day when I would read what they had written.

Because the blogverse is a fluid and wonderful thing I know that the holes they leave will eventually fill as would the hole left here if I disappeared. That doesn't make me any less sad. At least Teresa is going to continue commenting so her sparkle and wit will continue to be enjoyed. Hopefully nerd will do the same.

It brings to mind many experiences I've had on the net over the years as people have fallen into and out of my life and as I've done the same to others. I am referring mostly to IRC channels and usenet newsgroups that were the best place in the world for a while and then eventually got killed by spammers and flamers and people trolling to cause trouble.

Now the blogverse appears to be fighting a pretty successful battle against the spammers although it can't do much but ignore the trolls and the flamers. Still they don't seem as prevalent. Maybe because here they can just find their own voice and people to be asinine with and they don't need to torture others as much.

Still and all it's astonishing how fast you can get attached to people on the net. Time doesn't move the same way here as it does in real life. Real life is full of peace and silence interspersed with conversation. There are pauses and moments of reflection that take actual time. On the internet somehow that doesn't happen. It's like the safety people feel by being alone in their homes as they post their thoughts for the world to read (or ignore) allows things to move so much faster because it causes some kind of openness that doesn't happen as quickly in real life.

I've had some incredibly intense online relationships and some of them translated into real life relationships but in all cases the timeline was accelerated because of the speed of the medium. In life we are constrained by our schedules and our phones and our time to be *with* people but on the net we just aren't.

I can email you while you're working and you can email me while I'm sleeping and somehow all of that leads to a logarithmic curve of acceleration. [uh starts slow and gets steep really fast] I suspect that I will continue to have some of my most fruitful and satisfying relationships online and that I will continue to meet people the world over that I will wish lived next door.

Of course that's part of the magic too. That you can meet people from here there and everywhere who will change your life because of their differing perspectives. The net really is a global village and is, in my mind, one of the few forces for truth and good in the world today. It's hard to lie on the net and it's hard to hate the people in (say) Guam when you actually TALK with one of them every day.

Maybe I'll win the lottery and buy a little apartment building and populate it with my net friends. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Or would it? Would it steal the magic away do you think?

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AND castu. three of my blogs in one day. man and i got fired from one of my jobs. today is not a nice day.