Reality Check- the people have voted.

Do you ever get the feeling that despite the pseudo-personal connection that the internet provides through the virtual chloroplast of Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, that we are in some ways fanning the flame of fabricated interconnection?

It's like the witness protection program, we can all hide behind cute profile names and witty banter, while not really having to invest in people personally. Don't misunderstand- I love hiding behind different persona's and snooping around these online yearbooks, it's like spying with a backstage pass. Besides how else would I have known that the paste-eater in my third grade class would turn out to be my mom's veterinarian- let's hope that glue wasn't a gateway drug to start sniffing Lassie's formaldehyde.

I guess my point is, while we can assuage our conscious by saying that we commented on so-and-so's profile- does it actually qualify as a substitute for a flesh and blood phone call or a face-to-face over coffee?

I can't help but notice that my generation is privacy obsessed. For instance, if I were to pick up the phone and call someone, is that crossing some kind of boundary? To me, sometimes it seems invasive. How "friendly" do you have to be with someone to graduate from online to real life? Has virtual reality made the art of conversation nothing more than a "lazy man's letter"- a series of back and forth, tête-à-tête where we no longer stand on our own two feet but we rely on the font-friendly social crutch of texts and one liners?

For me, it's becoming a wheelchair! I love words, I am much better at commenting and writing letters than talking on the phone. Phone's make me nervous, and I am somewhat of a fast talker- I am constantly getting caught in that "talking-over-you-talking-over-me" thing- it's exhausting.

Which leads me to this: If I add up all of my "friends" online I have a total of 1,773. Whaaaaaa?? And yet when I look through my phone I have a total of 40 contacts. Granted, I don't want to have over 1700 numbers in my phone, but the fact of the matter is this: internet friends are somewhat like high school friends. You all hang out at the same place but when it comes to showing up for an event that you post, or reading your blog, or commenting your status, it's just too big of a school for everyone to care.

Egocentricity is king these days, so I decided to run a little experiment with my online clout. Aside from my fellow bloggers, who are all so diligent at reading each others blogs and encouraging each other to keep on being creative I wanted to recruit all of my "friends" online to see what kind of turn out I could get for my marriage blog/survey.

The jury is in... a total of 11 people voted. And that's just about right. If you can get 11 people to take a minute out of their day to read your sporadic, typo-ridden, "look at me, look at me!" ramblings, I'd say that's pretty good.

Here's the people's vote: Marrying your Best Friend is the way to go by 64%. My advice is this: If you are going to marry your best "friend" make sure you get a real proposal, and not via text or an online "gift" digital ring in your inbox- which may be the next wave of humanistic abandonment, God forbid.

I hate to say this, but "virtual" friendship is just what the dictionary says it is: "noting an image formed by the apparent convergence of rays geometrically, but not actually, prolonged, as the image formed by a mirror (opposed to real)." Not real. Hmmm...

So call someone today, hug someone, or write a good old fashioned letter. Technology is great, but investing in those REAL friendships, much better.