Virtual vs. Real world - what's the real difference?

There's a myth around that the "virtual world" is somehow a different place from the real world we all live in.

Interestingly, it's a myth found only among those who haven't tried out social media and social networks. Once you dip your toe in the online conversation, you find that blogs, Facebook, Twitter - and on and on - are all elaborations on (not replacements of) the art of one human relating to another.

And often, you'll find that there's a strong desire to cross borders. Take the phenomenon of Tweetups for example. People in a local area, united only by their use of the social networking platform Twitter. It's a tenuous link, but one that causes people to search for other things in common.

We had one in Auckland, New Zealand, the other day. "Organizing" it was just a matter of me saying "Do we have time for one last Twitter meetup for 2008? Or is that just crazy talk?"

Over the next few hours people came back, enthusiastic to squeeze in a meeting, even with the silly season in full swing. Someone nominated a venue, which everyone else voted on, and then I promoted the tweetup through a blog post and through our Facebook group.

Photo of me with a Twitter friend
at the Auckland Tweetup

We had 13 people come along - not a huge amount of people, but not a small group either, especially not in a crowded pub!

What is it that motivates people to share a few hours with almost total strangers? The technology's only a small part of the equation. A bigger factor is the "almost" total stranger part - some level of trust and relationship has built up, and, being human, most people want to explore further, to put faces to the names, thoughts and avatars they see on screen.

It used to be that you could say where a community started and ended. But online social networking is blurring those lines. Is our Auckland Twitter meetup a genuine community? Hard to say. We know each other on a fairly intimate level, since we relay some of our innermost thoughts in those 140 characters. Would we stick up for each other when the chips are down? I hope we don't have to find out, but I get the feeling there's great potential within groups like this.

Comments

[Marissa Bracke]

I really enjoyed this post. It made me think of the real world / virtual world separations that I make in my own head, and question whether they're really valid separations.

For example, now that I work from home, I have a tendency to say that I interact with people far less than I did when I worked each day in an office. But the reality is that I now interact with significantly more people, from far more diverse walks of life, than I ever did in any office. The difference is that my interactions now are mostly "virtual."

Yet what does that really mean? I've formed business relationships, friendships, and fascinating connections with folks I've never met in the "real" world. And the fact that we email, Tweet, or Skype rather than meeting for coffee doesn't truly make any part of those relationships less "real." Because if we were within reasonable driving distance of one another, we almost certainly would get together for in-person interaction, like you describe for Tweetups.

So what's really the difference?

The way I classify the relationship, as "virtual" or "real-world." The verbiage. The semantics. That's it. And they're semantics that I think perhaps once were far more useful and meaningful than they are now, back when online interaction was far less mainstream.

So rather than saying, "She is a Facebook friend" or "I know him through Twitter," I could just as easily say, "She is a friend," or "I recently got to know him." It's the same thing, really.

Okay, I'm going to stop rambling in the comment section to your post. Your post just really got me thinking, and I was compelled to share.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post!

[Dave Murphy]

On Christmas Eve (at least it still is on this side of the planet), a post about virtual vs real world must include a quote from "Miracle on 34th Street":

Kris Kringle: "Of course in order to play it, you've got to have an imagination. Do you know what that is?"

Susan: "Oh sure. That's when you see things but they're not really there."

Kris: "Well...that can be caused by other things, too. No, to me the imagination is a place all by itself...a separate country! Now you've heard of the French Nation or the British Nation. Well, this is the Imagine Nation. It's a wonderful place!"

I firmly believe the Imagine Nation is a real place with many benefits of citizenship, as are the other wonderful places Simon describes that are permitted by this amazing online world. We just need to visit those places to experience their realities.