Here in The Cellar - Is It *Real*?
 

Yeah, I said it...is it *real*? Our relationships, I mean (this is, after all, the relationships thread).

Few of us know each other or have ever met IRL. Essentially, to one another, we are all letters on a screen and little else. Oh, yeah...some personalities come across loud and clear. Some of those personalities are easier to stomach than others. Some are more interesting than others. Some are more irritating than others, some apparently more glamorous, still others more attractive, literate, intriguing, provocative, and lots of other adjectives...just like reality. But...

...if we are just batting around words here, with few ever having to face another Cellarite and look into their eyes - Is any of this *real*? If I tell LJ he's a cocksucker, does he get pissed, and do I feel sorry for being out of line? If TW propounds on the morality of international politics and Kagen tells him he's a left wing weenie, is anyone responsible for their words and "actions"?

I guess what I'm looking for here is this: how much weight/value/import do *you*, as a member of this virtual community, place upon your interactions here? Do your feelings get hurt when someone nails your ass? Do you actually feel supported when you open up your guts and let people know that things suck for you and you could use some strokes/input? Do you visualize a real, flesh and blood person sitting somewhere at a computer, carefully considering their words (as I am desperately trying to do now), and ending up making you happy/sad/angry/confused?

As in real life (and magickal life as well), things have only as much power as you give them, but don't you need to give a certain amount of empowerment to what goes on here on The Cellar to make it worth bothering with at all?

for me it is beter than the realy real world , but realy about the same .
If'n I ever got to Forks I would be the guy tending the fire and listening to all the conversations , adding a bit here and there but tending the fire none the less .
I do this on camping trips with friends , I allways have , sorta in the back ground but sorta up to date as well .

I think it is real. I've found myself in real world conversations referring to something that was said here. You guys are real to me.

It's real to a point. I find myself thinking about stuff on here from time to time. In all my years on net forums there has been only one person I want to outright kill and maybe three or so I'd be rude to. So I don't worry about it much.

pat, if you want to call me a cocksucker, just come out and say it. there's no need to create this whole big 'philosophical smokescreen' around it. ;) but cerealy, this is absolutely real. i'm a little bit surprised that you ask this instead of stating it. seems like maybe that's what you're doing.....reminding us that when we call each other a fucktard that we might actually hurt someone's feelings. ya bleeding heart nancy boy. I know more about what makes you guys tick than many of my real life friends. you don't get this level of intimacy without the 'anonimity' that this medium provides. it's like a confessional in some respects. granted, you have to sort through a lot of lies and posturing, but I, for one, can tell when someone is being real or coming off. those that treat this as a place to fluff their own ego or try to impress us with how cool they want to be are typically reduced to rubble forthwith. I think that is the main reason i read the cellar. it's definitely what hooked me....the thread UT started about his divorce, specifically. I come off as a hammer from time to time, but i think that most of you know that i would have your back in a time of need.

this new revision fucks with paragraph structure. the above had a couple of breaks in it that have been squished down by the software.....

I can't wait to see tw's next post...

Is it real - funny because that's the point I made to Dinty Moore when he interviewed us in 1995 for his book about the internet, and the one he took from it. It most certainly is real, just a different way of being social.

In the olden days, people's letters to each other were considered so vital and important that they were carefully collected. Can you imagine what it must have been like, when it was a near-impossibility for people from a different town to get together for dinner or what-have-you, without having to involve beasts of burden and a back-breaking trip? They were social with their family and people in their immediate vicnity, but people three miles away were separated by a wall of distance.

When the telephone was invented, it made us think that talking directly to each other was the only way of being social. That's been the convention. Well now it doesn't have to be. And frankly what an advantage, because now I'm being social with the lot of you, not just one.

My paragraph breaks were kept in place LJ... I'm using Firefox/WinXP

and both advanced and quick reply editor

ya. firefox and xp here too.

test.

must have been me

Better than real, you can't smell me.:nuts:

Yeah, its real. Psychologists have actually written papers on the social interactions of groups on the Internet.

Everyone who sticks around here for any length of time is usually intelligent and witty and has some interesting stuff to say, even when I completely disagree with them.

I've learned a lot of stuff here that I would never have known about otherwise, and this forum and a few others help me feel more a part of the world since my circumstances currently force me to lead a rather cloistured life.

I look for posts by the regulars and if someone suddenly stops posting for a while, I wonder if they're OK and what happened to them. I like the fact that this forum has a core group of posters who have been here for years. It gives the place a real feeling of continuity and community.

I also post on some huge forums and, while interesting, those forums just don't have the same comfy feel of the Cellar. UT has done an outstanding job tending to this place, and I really like his "hands off" attitude where he pretty much lets members police the forum themselves. I don't know of another place on the net that is so open.

And to continue UT's comments on the fine art of writing. Its a form of communication that almost got lost for a while there. Discussion groups on the Net have kept the art of correspondence alive. And people's individual personalities do come through on their posts.

This place and the dwellers here are certainly "real" to me.

Yeah, I get upset when someone calls me (or thinks of me) a fucktard. I also feel lifted up when I get support from you all. I like it here because the cellar is much more liberal than people here in my town. I was given a lot of very real support a while back--more than anything I could get IRL here. I find less judgement and more acceptance here. My sis lived in Philly (well, Swarthmore) for ten years and she LOVED it. She felt very ok expressing her pagan beliefs, etc. there. When she moved to Cincy, she found herself smack in the middle of the Bible belt, finger-wagging, soccer-mom hell. That's what Ohio is like.

Truely, I am curious to know how others view the interactions here. I *know* my own opinion (which is that this is totally real and a valuable part of my real life, in case you were wondering), but as I learn more and more each day, my view of things is not always enough to form an accurate picture of consensus reality. I actually had no intention of chastising or otherwise trying to caution people about treating each other with respect. Adults ought to know that in the first place, IMHO, and if people mistreat other people online, I think it is a safe bet that they probably do that IRL as well.

I have made friendships here with people I have never met and very well may *never* meet. I value those friendships as much as those based on face to face interaction and shared in person experiences. I just thought it would be cool to see how others see things, and spur a bit of discussion about the whole concept.

This community is real to me, of course.

The American structure of working a job has been that of continous toil year round with few if any real breaks for as far back as I have any personal experience.

Once you get out of school, whatever that might be, you are stuck in a lifelong journey of working and working and working.....only to have short breaks to recharge. During these short breaks, weekends, holidays and vacations (that are not only short but that you cannot take as you wish ), you are most often competing for time and space with every other person that has exactly that same short time away as well.

The weekends? There are too many people in my way to do anything. Holidays? Same thing. During the time that most everyone else is at work. Absolutely the best time to do anything. You arent competing with everyone in the world to get anything from a sub sandwhich to just getting somewhere on the road without a LAWS rocket and your face painted red.

Once I took the first contract and experienced the pure freedom of having both time and money without the bullshit of having to check in, get permission (?? fuck you ??) or somehow be tied by the gonads to some corporation, I was hooked. Direct jobs? With very few exceptions, I've recieved an offer from the contract that I'd finished at that time for a direct job. I'm not a direct job guy though. I know the freedom of taking time off to go abroad for months at a time......without some assbag requiring that I check in or file a report every week.

The "security" of direct jobs? I've seen those directs hit the door as a contractor more times than I can count. The security these days is only if you pimp yourself out CHEAP and bust your ass long and hard from my observation.

So anyway.....this means that I'll always be a wanderer. A FREE wanderer. A free wanderer that has time to get his head straight once a year with a real vacation.

What does the Cellar mean to someone that makes new friends, moves to a completely new area, has to ramp up instantly with a new company's policies once or maybe twice a year.

Familiarity.

When I leave a company, there are always people there that would somehow like to keep in touch. That's ridiculous. I dont tell them that to their faces because in their mind, they like me and want to stay friends. The reality is that I'll be 700 miles away 10 days from now and even if I did take the time to chat with them or take the time to e-mail, they would not.

Their lives are that of the real world, face to face friendships. They dont have any idea how to have friends any other way and only see face to face friendships as real.

Many times these same people "try to help me" by inviting me out for some social thing or that. Most often I politely decline saying something like..."I have friends online that I stay in contact with regardless of where I am...and those people are accustomed to being online, so we stay in touch long term...I'm not lonely nor depressed about not coming out of this little place that I've rented here."

Thanks for the offer but your life is completely different from mine. They most always think that my life is somehow lesser......until I send them a collection of postcards from places all over the world.....or the company that they have invested their entire life on lays off 15,000 people in one city...in one day and they suddenly realize that the house that they paid way too much for will be on the market competing for buyers with 15,000 more homes, at exactly the same time that all those people will be competing for jobs to pay for those mortgages.

Sucks to be me???

The Cellar is someplace that people know me, like me or not. I know most of the regulars here and people take this place seriously. People here often overlook my jack-ass-ish-ness or just put me on ignore, which seems to work out good.

There are a variety of topics to look into, learn from and contribute to. This makes the Cellar just what it used to say..... a little coffeeshop without the coffee or the shop.

There are also a wide variety of life experiences here as well. You can get some opinion or suggestions on so many things here from rebuilding a drum to surviving a divorce.

Most all people give the real deal too. It's not showmanship for the board.

This is my group of friends regardless of where I am at.

Actually, I think they already have a guy for that.;) My friend Jim and I usually tend to the grill and soak up the conversation and the sights, both of which can get a little strange. Bob and Wolf are good hosts and make it easy for everyone to relax and have fun.

I really have only two speeds when it comes to conversation. I have the background gather information mode which you seem to prefer. However, if it touches on something I am passionate about, I can move toward the opinionated rant.

Really, if I get going and become any more of a jerk, I'd have to apply for a job with Fox News, of course after undergoing the mandatory surgery to remove higher brain functions.

Of course, since I don't drink, I don't have the convenient "Did I say something wrong last night, because I was drunk off my ass and I don't remember any of it" excuse.

That being said, I really like being around people having fun, and I like to think that I can come up with occasional conversation worth having.

im a bit busy atm so i didnt have time to read everyones posts (ill come back later) but i feel like the cellar is real to me. just the mere mention of my name in a post about the cellar community made me all giddy inside. just like with irl friends you hope that they always think about you now and again. im definately a little more open on here than irl but its still my personality.

and elspode, good to see you spelt "magickal" right instead of the illusion creating "magical"

My real experience in an orange jump suit helped at least one member face the judge with courage. Although I haven't done it a lot, I like when I can be supportive at The Cellar for a real person somewhere. And the last time I went to court, another member was 'there' for me.

But, it helps me to remember that if people are crticial of me, they are working with limited information, and not to take it too personally nor hold a grudge. It's real, but limited.

Know you? Where did you come from all of a sudden? I see that you have a high post count. Since I follow a limited number of threads, I must have just missed you until recently. Although I have a small post count, I am somewhat memorable for being so screwed up.

As for Contract versus F/T, different strokes for different folks. I have a number of friends that rather contract. I don't like being disengaged like that. But, I hate big companies, the largest I worked for grew from 85 to 800 before I left. I prefer F/T at a 25-50 person company for 2-3 years.

'

There are months at a time that I lurk without logging in. Most of the time it's from foreign machine or that I'm interested in what's going on but am working long hours and dont have the time to really digest what everyone is doing now.

Posting something understandable and on topic takes a longer time for me to compose than I would guess that same task takes others also.

One day I'm here....for the next 3 months, I'm gone.

Contracting is a different world, yes. There are often barriers for the contractor where for the directs there are not.

I can only deal with the endless regulations and policies to oversee and control every nook and cranny of what a person might do on the job for just so long. The bigger companies are famous for that.

Big and inflexible but tend to pay more.

If only I could find an income that could travel as I do, independantly from the BS and stress of actually showing up in an office, I'd much rather not be a part of all that.

The reality is that as good as I am at my niche job, I'm all that much worse at the basic concepts of running a profitable business of almost any size.

Having such a job over the net or such would be something that I'd like very much to have. I've tried or am trying in one fashion or another but havent found that magic "thing" or service yet.

Despite the failures, I'll keep trying.

Then I'll stay in one place for a while and long for the days of going all over the place. :blush:

Sounds like I have to reading to do. Screwed up people fascinate me...er, I mean....people from completely different circumstances in life and backgrounds interest me.

My Cellar
 

Although very few if any of us have met IRL, I come here often to browse and get input/advice on things that I'm dealing with because many of you are or have dealt with these issues already. I find your input extremely important to me. Your responses have value because you have experience with these issues and I don't know others IRL that have dealt with the difficulties or opportunities which I am currently facing. That doesn't mean I always follow your advise, but your words have value nonetheless and I do consider them.

Conversely, I have recently been visiting "Myspace" to check up on my kids and what they are doing online and found many fake, irresponsible and utterly pathetic people there. It is quite refreshing to know that the cellar exists and it really does have more of a comforting feel to it. Although I may share some things from my life with "real friends" there are always some reservations about being judged or looked down upon because I am dating someone 18 yrs my junior. Sorry, Brianna and Bruce, but yes I'm still with her - sort of. :eyebrow: And for what its worth, things are going very well.
The beauty of the cellar is that I can REALLY share what is going on with me without any fear of repercussions and receive honest valuable responses without the "Real Life" crap getting in the way. Here I believe most people tell it like they see it - and that is truly refreshing. Too many people in real life are too fake. Here that baggage doesn't exist. And for that, to all of you and the cellar, I extend a huge THANK YOU.

Yes. Well said.

Myspace hookup?

I keed, I keed. :lol:


Usually, you guys are an alternate reality for me. I can come in and be serious or flippant, depending on my mood, and don't have to justify or explain anything. I usually prefer to only comment on certain threads (e.g., ones that require only a one-liner or that deal with polarizing, emotional topics like religion). If someone thinks I'm an asshole, that's fine -- I'm not threatened by words or by some faceless clown with a login and an axe to grind.

But in recent months, I've talked to a couple of you outside the cellar, and was kind of surprised to find real depth and warmth there. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, seeing as how there's more to me than I let on in this environment -- I guess here more than anywhere else you only see what people want you to see.

So I guess what it all means is that I've only recently discovered the human undercurrent to the internet (thanks mostly to this site), and it's probably affected how I respond to people both online and in RL.

Nightmare fuel for this evening: faceless clowns.

clowns can still cry! :worried:

Whoa, Nellie. When did I ever advise you not to go for it?
Not me, man......I'm in favor of trying every car on the lot, that's offered. :driving:

I think things in my life are approaching an even level of surreal or unreal. Some days I wake up tired enough to barely speak simple sentences, but through rote repetition & blind luck manage the ride to campus, wake up enough on the way to stumble through a day's worth of drudgery, & then bike home again. Sometimes I'll catch myself wondering how I got somewhere, or less thinking that something should be done & more accepting that that is the next item on my long itinerary of life, the next step in a short-term tradition followed blindly. The past 10 weeks are a rained-out smudge of a memory.

So in a sense, this place is as real as anything else I do or see or read. Which is to say: not very. (& yet then, this is my life: so what is more real than what I'm living, dreamy & detached as I am?)

Skunks,

If what you wrote is not an exaggeration, then it sounds like you are depressed. It doesn't have to be that way. You should see a counselor.

Enter.....Wolf

Slang's right on this one, as is dar. Skunks, you need to go talk to somebody. As in somebody professional rather than just, you know, somebody. You sound like a good guy, keep it that way.

As far as this place goes, I'd say it's mostly real ... individuals here are either real or they're not, so if I say that it's about 75% real, that's referring to 75% of the posters rather than 75% of the posts, if you get what I'm trying to say.

When people are real or full of shit here, they come by it naturally rather than artificially.

I am as unreal as you can get I'm just a fragment of your imitation.

To get back on track here, the cellar is the first thing I look at in the morning, and the last thing I look at when I goto bed. Being homebound I love to here your tales of triumph and tribulation. If there is any way we can, we want to meet you guys.

The cellar is a very real place, and I am sometimes frustrated, and sometimes tickled by some of the stuff I have read here. I have even thought of making a book of quotes from the cellar.

The few I have had PM's with, have demonstrated a knowledge of me better than people that have known me for 30 years or more.

The response I recived from my "I'm Leaving You" thread was overwhelming. This is more like a "brick and morter cofffee shop" than alot of places I go to IRL. Maby it is the anymouse(sp) nature of the Internet or, it is as mentioned above the people who stay here are intellagent and thoughtful, with interesting things to say. I have seen alot of your pictures on frappr and you look like the kind of folks I like to hang with.

If any of you come to my house I brew up some wiked ass coffee, so come on over and kick back with Lady Keryx and me. Love terry&becky

I'm still new and don't know anyone here really, but I like it here because it does seem a lot more "real" than most boards I've been on but without being boring or cliquish. In nearly every board I have been on regularly there has been a lot of bizarre power-control stuff going on and I occasionally get dragged unwittingly into something because I just posted what I was thinking and had it misunderstood or wrongly interpreted. Without visible emotions to back up the words, language is doubly important in these forums, the ability to convey it as well as understand it in all its nuances, and this seems to be one of the likelier places for that interplay to actually occur. I especially appreciate the underlying sense of humor here which is lacking from so many other forums and is the reason people are always getting offended by one another.

Oh. Well.

I got a little melodramatic, maybe: I like the things that I do (playing with fire, playing with clay); I have good friends, fun hobbies, few worries; I eat enough, get some exercise. I am just often surprised at the routine, and my ability to function the same when exhausted as when I am alert. In fact, more than mood I was speaking of general sleep deprivation. Is there a connection, then, between depression and sleep, such that what I have been assuming is a mixture of overworked and underrested is in fact some more heinous ill?

I guess it's just that, even though self-diagnosis is certainly all kinds of unreliable, I don't consider myself terribly sane, but I definitely think that I am at best happy, & indeed most often am content or better, all of which fit onto the positive side of the Scale of Life, wherein depression is on the other.

Or you could just be in denial. Didn't Even kNow I Am Lying A self diagnosis usually requires a professional second opinion. Avoid those that have license to commit people. ;)

Don't sweat it Skunks, I didn't read into your post anything about being depressed - I just thought you were commenting on how we can go through life exhaausted and still maintain some type of functionality within our own everyday grind. Sometimes, I too feel like I'm sleepwalking through a day and just "existing" others I am fully motivated and charge on relentlessly. Its just the ups and downs. I must say that there is avery real and definite relationship between depression and sleep patterns though. Coming from one who was married to a depressed pyschotic - it was/is very easy to get suck into the negativity of their reality and lose sight of all the splendor of this amazingly beautiful and wonderous world we live in. Now that I'm out of that relationship, people are teling me that I've changed so much and have a much more positive outlook on things. I have to admit -I am dealing with more issues and stress right now than before, but I feel great and can't wait for the challenge of the next day so I can kick its ass! :)

I really shouldn't post when I am really wasted. What I think I meant to say was, "I like it in here."

I spent many, many years in that black hole that yesman describes. I'm quite happy and stable now but I still find that my days blur together and sometimes I do feel as though I am on autopilot. I don't have a typical job so I lose track of days and I don't really sleep according to a schedule either. But it's different from when I was depressed, when time was at a murky standstill and all I wanted to do was sleep. That didn't sound like what Skunks was talking about, but more the becoming swept up in life and oblivious to time. Maybe? Ah well.. time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so...:)

to me this place is pretty real, how much so didn't really strike me until I was sans internet for a little while and during the cmep_2 (which I need to download the new stuff) when a package showed up in my realy real mailbox of a CD of the things I had missed.. blew my mind really. and although I haven't met anyone from here IRL I have come close, and there are others I expect to in the future if my "sinister plan" pans out. (nothing too radical, although there are more than a few musicians here, and if I get my bar/grill/music venue idea into fact.. then there'll be a spot to play and a warm place to sleep for anyone coming thru these parts) anyway, another thing that strikes me, you people are as real as people I meet in daily life, although you don't have faces, just personalities that come thru loud and clear.. interesting stuff.. and here I thought all those sociology classes were nothing more than mind candy.

Yeah, Go Stillers!!!!

Last week at work, I named a Java class (Ward) after the Super Bowl MVP.

Whoever has to maintain that code is going to hate you. Couldn't you have just put in a "yeah team" comment?

Actually, it was the best name for the class. It represents a running JVM that a "nanny" service must start and monitor.

I did have to leave a joke in a comment:

public class Ward //,Hines #86

real? yeah. i think so. some of you read my rants, don't you? that makes you more real than some of the flesh and blood folks i see every day.

The question is not whether its real, but HOW real is the cellar. To find out just read an entire thread and think about how you "feel the pain" that the writer is expressing - My posts in Y/W O/M or a tribute to a lost father or What does this mean . . . there are too many to list - there is NO question if its real or not. Sometimes its too real to be quite honest. People freely expressing their innermost pain and, yes their triumphs as well, is as real as it gets. This is not always true IRL because we are all biased by looks and appearances - here we can only judge by what we read and the story as it unfolds. There are no preconceived notions or opinions based upon race, color, creed, nationality, dress, wealth whatever. . . . . .

Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye and bye
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills

Greatfully Dedicated too eh? Very nice

Y'know, I feel a bit odd reviving a topic, but its only been dead 2 weeks, so...

I may have only been here... less than a week, but I already feel nice and comfy here, even if I am one of the youngest members. I feel confident that when I'm naive and immature I will fit right in (heh, couldn't resist) and when I'm mature I'll, well, be able to hold my own with a bunch of adults. I know I can count on you people for help if I need it, even though I don't know you in person, and I know I would do what I could to help any of you. I'd say the Cellar is as real as any group of people getting together to chat and hang out, 'cept with less alcohol and less "hey ya'll, hol' my beer 'n' watch this!".

...Ah, who'm I kidding, there's a lot of that anyway.

Now, more than ever. :thumb:

Old threads are cool, although I wouldn't call this one "old". Every once in a while, someone will come along and read through the archives, responding to threads that are months or even years old. Personally, I enjoy it. Jogging the memory, rereading posts I'd forgotten and wondering about posters that have disappeared.

I'm not sure, is nostalgia in or out at the moment?

remember when nostalgia was fashionable? those were the days, man. good times, ............good times.

nostalgia is out, retro is in

i thought retro was in and nostalgia was out

I thought we were all being ironic about the past?

that passed

I don't think "in" is in anymore

I think you are correct Rock Steady, 'out' is the new black

so...in is out and out is black? what about retro and nostalgia? are they out or black or ironic. or if in is out then is ironic, irotuoc? i cant handle this thread any more.
i dont think im hip enough.

I've been working 16 hours straight. So nothing makes sense to me right now. Stick a fork in me; i'm done.

Are forks black or in?

Heh, I find it amusing that the 'counterculture' is so mainstream now. Like, look at what rock radio plays. "Alternative" like... Green Day, Blink 182, Franz Ferdinand, or whatever other angst-sludge gets pulled outta the barrel. But the only thing it's an alternative to anymore is rap. Angst is the pinnacle of 'cool' now.

That's why I've seceded from my generation, and have "regressed" to the... Late 70's / Early 80's, I guess. my hair is more 70's/80's-ish than anything else, I just bought myself a new pair of really rad 80's glasses, and I listen almost exclusively to 60's, 70's, and 80's music. 'Course, I wasn't alive for any of it, but that can't stop me from trying, eh?

I find it ironic yet retro-nostalgic hip that you like 80's stuff. I was there for the original. It was a very disturbing time.

That's not true, it was OK.

The country was at peace and AIDS had not yet become a problem

People went rollerskating, and decorated gyms with crepe paper, and drove monzas and fiestas

Part of my love of the 80's comes from not having been there, I think. I look at a lot of it and laugh, but love it like people love retarded children. And parts of it I look at, listen to, then learn how to play. 80's shred metal pwnz, and I love hair metal, too (remember what I said about loving it like a retarded baby?)

Regarding the ORIGINAL post.


Yes, too real sometimes. I love to look in a persons face. I am a good reader of faces and body language. I can spot a good heart or a phoney a mile away usually , unless they are a good lier and I get mixed messages I may shy away.( irl)

Here in text, messages and impressions get mixed. I am a visual and feeling person and I am missing that vital 90 % piece so please be patient with me. I get it wrong alot probably.