On Skype? It was either Phil's second interview on Slacker Astronomy, or his first on Skepticality. I can't remember which came first.

As for the rest, it really depends on the group. I was briefly part of a "adults-only cruising club" on...

(wait for ears everywhere to perk up...)

... Test Drive Unlimited. The conversation wasn't especially exciting (it was at the wary meet-and-greet stage), but it was civil and mature. The idea was to fort up a bit so we could enjoy our favorite cars (the ones we'll never get to touch, let alone own) without the burden of having to listen to annoying little 1337 kids swearing at us all night, and without having to compete aggressively in order to participate meaningfully.

There are a number of other invitation-only gaming clans with similar goals.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Depends on who you're online with. I've used Teamspeak in Star Wars Galaxies for squadron flying in space. I've raided in WoW with Ventrillo. In these cases, its actually enhanced gameplay by speeding up communication to the pace of the action around us without taking our hands away from the hotkeys.

I've even demonstrated my rather embarassing impediment in SWG during my one shot at uttering the famous line:

"Flock shrike falls...er...Lock shike foils....Dammit, open your wings and shoot something..."

Gotta hang out with the old folks. One of the reasons I've been lucky in being in guilds where most people were over 30. Keeps things a LOT more tolerable, especially when the wimmenfolk get on TS while schnookered...

I suspect that the only people who really go to far with "internet socialization" instead of the real thing are the people who wouldn't have done much of the real thing anyway, or at least not enjoyed it much. That could be for various reasons, not necessarily bad ones like mental health problems. It could also be due to having unusual interests and not knowing anybody offline who shares them. Or it could be an interest in a more thorough, detailed, and analytical style of conversation than most people seem to want, so that many verbal conversations are perceived as not really having enough meat to them.

I have a few friends in that industry, so I know exactly of which you speak. Certainly...fascinating...on some levels.

Once I met a colo-rectal surgeon.
He did not quite understand;
I said, "Hey, I'm pleased to meet you!
But would you mind if we don't shake hands?"
- The "Colo-rectal Surgeon Song"
- Bowser and Blue

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Y'know, I'm tempted to load up SWG just to see what this is like.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Don't bother, its a shadow of itself. My last account expires on April 10th, and I don't even have it installed anymore. Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts just defecated all over it trying to whore it out into a SciFi Warcraft and ended up taking one of the best player community based games in the industry and turning it into a mindless grind who's target audience I can't describe fully in terms that won't result in a ban here.

Me, too--oh, me, too.

I'm a fairly gregarious person. The problem is more that I don't have much of a social life because I stayed in the city in which I went to college. All my friends, or at least almost all of them, moved away. My new friends are through ren faire, which means they live all over the place, mostly too far away for seeing one another except at faire. (Though my boss's daughter's spending the last few days of her spring break with us. I'm twice her age, ye Gods.) I don't work, so I can't make friends there, and when I was working, very few of my coworkers shared any intellectual interests with me, and those who did were all bound and determined to find better jobs and get out of there.

But here, the distance doesn't matter. I am very close to people here I never would've met otherwise. Heck, I've received snail mail from three of you, and I've exchanged e-mails with others. (Tog_, did you get the last lesson I sent you?) I'd interact with you in person, real-world, if there were a way to do it, but there isn't.

And let's not forget one other benefit of computer-aided conversations--due to my sleep schedule, I'm awake while Graham's at work at his desk somewhere in Iraq. I talk to him daily even though he's away at war. What other war has had that as a possibility?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I have to admit that my previously rigid stance regarding internet communicating is eroding away by the post. I still think that it can have its negative aspects, at least as far as developing social skills is concerned, but it seems to have at least as many advantages as disadvantages. Maybe more.

Anything in excess is a problem.

Too much drinking, carousing (*smackself* ok, yeah, I actually do mean this), spending, whatever. Yeah, you can get to the point where you follow any personal interest to the point where it becomes a detriment to your life.

Its a question of monitoring the line between an "interest" and an "obsession".

Does a person drink as a part of socializing, or are they just out getting schnookered for the sake of killing their liver? Is a person actually interested in getting to know someone else, or is the one on his/her shoulder just tonight's conquest?

I think WOW, for the most part is calming, unless you are PVP or what I was doing the other night. Grr, I am a lvl 28 Shammy and I was fighting 27-29 water elementals. Every other one would suddenly become immune to everything and kill me. If I were alone in the house, my angry german kid impression would have been in full force. I think that kid needs medication.

Oh lordy...the final frontier has been crossed. This is one I NEVER saw coming...ok, bad pun, but here it is...

A woman was recently exposed on the internet for having exchanged sexual services for the 5000 WoW gold needed buy her epic mount. The question now is, is it prostitution if the money exchanged wasn't real?

Have fun, I'm laughing myself to tears here.

Metal Gear Solid is the best game ever!!! (ignore me, i did not even read a single post in this thread--except for the title-- so I dont know whats going on)

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if we can't be ourselves then happiness and sadness are both just lies

As the song goes, "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing, Baby!"