If I were a Psych major and needed a Masters thesis topic, I'd just just come here and sort thru almost 4 years of threads and relationships/personas.....

Having been a regular in a chatroom several years ago, till it died, I KNOW that various people approach online personalities differently...some are simply unable to accept that there are real people on the other end. They treat it like some play they are writing, and say anything... with no concern for consequences.

I have watched as people fell in love....had affairs...got married...broke up...and even died(not all the same people)- as their online 'friends' watched. And some of those online 'friends' stayed faceless and aloof from it...while others cried and made real trips to share part of their lives....it is no different here.

We have varying abilities to cope, absorb, intuit, share, care and, maybe most important, to *hear* what others are feeling and saying without simply projecting 'agendas' on it all...

I wonder sometimes if maybe those who do multiple personas actually adopt a different attitude for each.... ..(the internet/WWW is not old enough yet for most people to work out all the protocalls needed, I suspect...maybe when the 20-somethings grow up)