Virtual or Reality

I have been thinking a lot lately about the blurring lines between our virtual world and our concrete world, and I must say I haven't been able to reconcile my confusion between the two.

What is real and what is not? What is meaningful and what is meaningless? What is fact and what is fantasy? My questions are prompted by the every changing social environment that is taking place through online tools. So often now people are meeting their future partners online through dating websites. People are grieving the loss of loved ones on facebook. People are sharing the most mundane of daily activities through hourly tweets. There is arguably greater social activity happening in the virtual world than in person these days.

What do we do about the very vague boundary between virtual reality and Reality? In many respects these two worlds can be separate - people projecting personas in their virtual world that are distinct (if not all together different) from their concrete world persona. Making or remaining friends with people online that one will never (and never intends to) communicate with or see in person. In essence, for some of us we have the opportunity now to live multiple lives - one in real life and then several others online, depending on our mood.

Of course this is also being done through interactive videogames (I recently saw a program about one that may actually be called Second Life, where people have virtual second lives with other individuals and relationships and workplaces).

But sometimes, and unavoidably, these worlds (as innocent as they may have started) collide. And then what?

A sad example of this collision course relationship between virtual and reality is the consequences of the virtual behavior of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying leads to real deaths.

Lest you think I am using an extreme and unique example, is it not true that many (most) people do, say and act differently - more boldly - online than they would in person? Don't many of us say things (even in email) that we would be challenged to utter in person? Our behavior online is a changed/edited/modified version of ourselves - and sometimes the fact that it is not "real" is permission to be....well, bad.

There are also amazingly positive contributions of this virtual world, in fact they are too numerous to list (but one doesn't have to look further than the Arab Spring to see the potential power of harnessing social media for real social change). But I think we are in a strange position, this generation, of navigating our feelings, behavior and moral attitude around the seemingly limitless tools available for online living. And I struggle with the fluid line between my own virtual world (hello blog) and my Real world - as its apparent the two are constantly intersecting and changing the other. I only hope that in the things that matter, I don't cross the line.