All this discussion of virtual worlds and the meshing of online and real worlds has led me to reflect on the very real impacts of virtual reality in my life. My mom met my stepfather on an internet dating website seven years ago. For antisocial people like my mom this was a mighty convenient way to meet people. Also, I went abroad to Mexico, and while I was there I corresponded with my mom via email sometimes several times a day. These emails are like a diary, I can look back on them as a recollection of my experience abroad, comparable to Margaret Mead's letters home, which she used as a way of drafting her ethnographic research and reflections.
While I was in Mexico, I acquired a "novio", and when I came back home, we communicated using MSN messenger, webcams and all. The continuation of our relationship would have been unlikely without communication via the internet. It is quite hard to talk on the phone in Spanish...However, I attribute the fact that we spent more time communicating online than we spent in person over the course of our year-long relationship to its eventual failure. Interpersonal communication cannot, in my opinion, be cast aside.
I met a fellow over the summer who has a blog of his poetry, which I thought was very good and insightful, and he was somewhat of an inspiration to me. However, whenever he communicated face to face, these insights were masked by social awkwardness and fronts. I had also been writing poetry, and in jest of all those who use blogs and online communication as their form of social relationships, i titled it: interpersonalcommunicationisoverrated (.blogspot.com). So I now have an anonymous, permanent record of my cryptically disguised deepest inner thoughts and concerns. And I, like my friend the inspiration, will not choose to develop my ability to communicate these thoughts orally, because then I cannot edit them.