Rick

However, I can’t agree that because interactions on the internet develop exactly like interactions IRL means that the internet ones are worse or evil. It just shows that people are stupid, and that relationships develop independently in the mind of one person in the relationship. I mean to say that relationships between people, IRL or online, are just the same as, say, “a personal relationship with Christ.” It’s all in an individual’s imagination.

Barring that weird Christ/celebrity “relationship,” there are 3 things going on: the relationship imagined by party 1, the relationship imagined by party 2, and whatever’s observed. It’s kind of an imaginary thing, this “relationship” thing. You can’t actually show someone one. So, in that sense, it’s all the same.

Zach’s problem is that the internet gives him access to a lot of information that he has no way of processing right now. He’s 17, and generally that means he’s an idiot. Not trying to discriminate here, but I was an idiot at 17, and so were my 17 year old friends. Maybe not “idiots,” but newbies. The internet is just a substitution for our big bulky camcorders: when he gets older, and hopefully wiser, if he sees he wrote this 20 years from now, he’ll die inside.

But, the sad thing is, most people are idiots, and he may never get it, unless his “it’s all good” attitude lands him in a situation where belief leads to his ruin. Belief in anything, a money-making scheme, a different religion, belief in democracy, the president, that kind of thing. That can be a hard and valuable lesson.