Sl connection as strong as Rl connection?

[Benson Gravois]

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

[Tari Landar]

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Benson Gravois wrote:

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

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Absolutely, but it is entirely situational and depends on a lot of different things.

I can say in my own experience, and from what I have seen and heard others(those I know quite well in rl and sl, and even folks I don't really know all that well) say....i happens, a lot more often than people might realize. 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Yes, absolutely.

It varies by commitment and intent, as well as the 'direction' planned (or unplanned) in the relationship. But provided you're both on the same page, it can easily meet the same bar regardless of platform.

Though it may be worth bearing in mind that I've been running parallel friendships/relationships for most of my life by this point. There is a learning curve, mostly in communication and emotional honesty.

[MishkaKatyusha]

online life is pretty much all i do >.>

i go outside once a month to get money orders to pay the bills with,and to take out the garbage,and occasionally to check me mailbox,thats it

 

[Radium Soup]

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Benson Gravois wrote:

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

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Considering the average duration of these connections is approximately three months, what do you think?

[Rhonda Huntress]

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Benson Gravois wrote:

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

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yes.

 

 

[Deesse Bloodrose]

Defnitely, one of my closest friends is here in SL. I have known him longer than a lot of my RL friends and we talk about any and everything.

[Madelaine McMasters]

It might be easier in to make strong connections SL than in RL. And it's certainly easier to break them, or have them broken. In RL, intimacy is diluted by the everyday necessities of being real. SL has none of that. In RL we talk with our mouths full of food, drop eye contact at the wrong moment, burp and... you get the idea. Here, we appear to be giving each other our undivided attention when, in reality, we might be doing a sudoku puzzle in the middle of a roll in the hay. In SL, a substantial portion of what we see in others is what we want to see in them, and a substantial portion of what people see in us is what we want them to see. If life is like a box of chocolates, SL is like a mirrored box of chocolates, laced with oxytocin.

Maddy is more beautiful and intelligent than the woman pushing her around from a chair in Wisconsin. She doesn't make rude noises during intimate moments, she doesn't talk over you, and she gives you her undivided attention. My good friends here can, I think, sense that the person in the chair cares for them, and I do. Nevertheless, I am both more and less than you see here. Some of that is intentional, some is unavoidable.

Caveat suitor.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I know many couples that have been together for years in SL and other VR worlds, including myself.  Some of those couples have taken it RL and married and now have children together and are very happy.

I also have friends in SL that I consider as close as my friends in RL and som of whom I have known for more than 9 years.

So yes, I believe that in some instances SL connections can be as strong as RL ones.

[Benson Gravois]

I don't understand the set up you live and in? How did you come to be in that situation? Don't you go shopping and buy food ?

[Perrie Juran]

Something to consider is "Dunbar's Number."

I think for many people in SL it should be properly spelled "Dumbars Number."

[SirLeighBastard]

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Benson Gravois wrote:

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

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Of course not!

Although I can not speak for all the socially disfunctional and inept individuals I repeatedly come into contact with inworld and in these forums, whose rl connections may be as inadequate and unsatisfying as the sensorily limited associations that they are involved in here.

***Call me when you get a life

[Whiskazz]

No, not at all. In RL, you have body language, non-verbal cues, eye contact, etc, to rely on when meeting folk for the first time. In SL, any avatar presenting as a 28-year old male indie DJ could be a 90-year old man or 14-year old girl for all you know.

Plus the conversation's generally better in RL.And people wouldn't start half the drama they do on SL if there was a RL consequence, like a good hard slap :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

I don't feel that they necessarily are. A lack of physical contact and presence, mixed with missing communicative cues and carefully tailored conversations make it difficult to connect with people online to the same depth.

 

That doesn't mean I don't care for my friends or RP family. I get upset when they've had a hard day or are having trouble. But I also almost cried during Toy Story 3 over the damaged relationships, trust issues, and impending doom.

 

Rather, I would say that such relationships are merely different rather than weaker/stronger or good/bad.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Benson Gravois wrote:

Question: In your opinion and experience, do you feel that you can make as intimate and as strong a conection with someone in sl as you canin rl?

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Second Life is only a subset of real life and any connections you are making in Second Life are actually real-life connections, however weak and artificial many of them are. I'd say that it would be possible to form a connection through Second LIfe that is as strong or stronger than some non-Second Life connections but you can't generalize.

[Kanjena]

Yes on a friendly level, where minds meet. No on a more intimate level, not without eye contact and other sensory factors, so many liars here that prove those kind of connections are mostly delusions.