When I was new to message board posting, I once got a little to involved with the people and found myself sucked into debate and people getting all grouped up in support of one another. Yet, I had never met anyone on the message board. Until one day, one of the people who debated me the most mentioned where he worked and it was in a town about two hours away. I was going through it one time, weeks later, and thought it would be interesting to stop and see who this person was and maybe even introduce myself if I was brave enough to get into some hot debate there in person. Well I walked in, this was an auto parts store that was locally owned, and I could not see anyone working but a woman and I knew the person I was looking for was a man. So I stayed a little longer and soon a man came out of the back room and came up to me to ask if I needed help. He was about 5'4" balding and was very nervous acting and when I asked questions, he mumbled a lot and did not answer me by looking me in the eyes and frankly he seemed very scared with his interaction with people. I knew it was the man from the message board, as he had posted pictures of himself, and I decided it best to keep my identity to myself and went about my trip up the interstate. Yet it taught me a lesson I never forgot online, in that we are not always who we seem here and often writing words of debate online come easier then we would in person. So after that meeting, I never took an online debater with so much seriousness. I realized that often they were just working on a weakness they have in their real life and I should not allow them to ever get to me. Also, I realized that often I made the mistake of putting personalities to people online that were actually just aspects of myself and not the people themselves and I was just arguing the the attitude that I read into their debates, and in affect, arguing with myself and not the shy man working in the auto supply store that really existed behind the screen name.
Have you ever had an experience like this one?