Like many here I've had an internet presence for a long time and I think we all go through an adjustment period. One thing I have noticed by interacting through others on the internet is that I can't rely on my appearance as I sometimes to do in real life. I'm not saying I'm incredibly handsome or anything, but I generally come across as somewhat imposing at times as I'm tall and well built, have black hair and most of the time I look very serious or angry, or so I've often been told. After meeting me though, people tend to consider me as a fairly nice, intelligent guy, if on the goofy side with a bit of a temper and a really sharp tongue. Anyway, in my real life I tend to control the tension in social situations as kind of an extension of my own feeling of well-being. Maybe it comes from getting so much unwanted attention as a kid, even though I'm the type that thrives on approval and attention. Online there is no first impression other than the first thing you've typed that another user sees. I hear you about being duller online than in real life, but honestly I get the impression that people with colorful personas on the internet tend to be shitty to be around in real life or incredibly boring. I'd say that online I tend to be the way I am with people I know, and am friendly with, but not necessarily close to. I also talk about poetry more online. If I'm being totally honest, a lot of people that are really into poetry and throw around surnames with great familiarity, for example, "oh, I simply love Plath!" tend to suck balls and not in any way that gives me pleasure. Not even from the degradation angle. It seems easier to find reasonable people who are into a bit of poetry here and there in online communities. Maybe it seems that way because where I live there is a strong anti-intellectual undercurrent (generally with an ill-concealed wish to be considered intelligent and well-spoken) amongst those I most often end up interacting with on a day-to-day basis and poetry is seen as something pretentious and anachronistic. I'd argue that the "working-class hero" posturing is both and worse. In any case, from my experience on the internet I've come to understand yet another way that the people around me are multifaceted. People I might tend to dismiss for whatever reason in regular life I might get into interesting discussions with on the internet. For me, the internet experience adds a certain depth to some areas of life and makes others more shallow.
It's funny, I get so hung up on the potential for bad behavior on the Internet that I often forget how liberating in a positive sense it can be. We get to share passions that we may feel discouraged in sharing in everyday life (poetry, in your case; in my case, myself (just kidding (kind of))), and you're right, we don't have to worry about how our physical representation colors how we're perceived. I have less of a problem with this in real life, since there's very little about my presence that's imposing. Sounds like kind of an awesome problem to have, actually. Re. The difficulty finding people in real life to talk to in acceptable terms about poetry vs. relative ease online: I have a couple close friends from college who a) bent all their academic willpower towards loving/understanding/crafting good poetry and b) put some of their most beautiful thoughts into poetic form during that time. To the best of my knowledge, neither of them now has anything to do with poetry. Seems like with poetry more than any other art form, there's this tendency for real-world interactions/expectations to smooth out every creative wrinkle, and to re-direct that energy into more, what, "acceptable" applications? I have no idea why. But you hear a lot of people say things like "I want to be a writer," or "I want to be a musician." You seldom hear "I'm gonna be poet-laureate." People get out of school and suddenly that side of their life seems to just languish in a way we don't generally expect our passions to languish. Sports? Fine to talk about sports. Visual art? Sure, there's a marketplace for that. Poetry? Where does it go? Of my two poet friends, one writes for a hotel-reviewing blog and the other edits an agricultural publication. Something about this is heartbreaking to me- not that they had to settle, because who doesn't, but that there are so few ways for people to leverage that passion into real-world interactions. I like to think that at least one of them (the better poet of the two) still secretly writes volumes in his spare time, and that the world's a better place for that output, whether it knows it or not. Hell, maybe they've found their own messageboards. This went off on a tangent. Can't remember my original point and there's little way to navigate back to it, as I'm typing on an iPad which, for all of the hype is an incredibly unintuitive word-processing device and seems by design to be fundamentally incompatible with my thought-process. Was I talking about the Internet? Poetry? Waffles? Dog grooming tips? No idea. Thanks, technology.
Yep, not a lot of love for poetry and you're right, the numbers dwindle sharply after college. I don't know why either. Plenty of "serious" poets had day jobs. I guess it's either in you to keep that love going or not. I hope your friends get back to it, or as you say, are secretly writing volumes. I like letting my mind wander, especially on the internet. No need to adhere so strictly to the point in an exchange like ours, I think. Also, as for my physical presence. It does have its moments, but dudes are always trying to crush my hand and making pointed comments like, "oh, I see you've met my wife." Whateva