Re: What has become of Gupshup?
I know.
It hurts because this was supposed to be the safe place where you are protected and immune from things that happen in “real life”. A place where you are only connected through a keyboard and a screen…lifeless and inanimate objects that should have no real impact on your life.
In actuality, virtual communities, by their very nature, turn out to be places that are often more hurtful than those things we deal with in real life. Because we feel so protected and removed, we tend to open up more. We tend to share things that we wouldn’t even share with those that are a part of our real life because here we do it anonymously…behind the comfortable veil of a nickname.
What most fail to realize is that we identify with our nicknames just as we do with our names. To other members we are “Sadi Sobi” but to ourselves, we are “your real name” parading as Sadi Sobi. And when there is an attack on “Sadi Sobi”, we perceive it as an attack on “your real name”. We forget that the members don’t necessarily see the bigger picture that is our life.
Anyhow…didn’t mean to carry on like this…
The crux of it is that this place is not as “virtual” as you would like to believe. It’s more real and more a family, a society of which we are part than we give it credit for. So when we see a disease take over, we hurt just as we would if it was happening to a near and dear friend or relative.