The thing that struck me from your original posts was this line:
(08-06-2015 23:22 )Forum Style Wrote: When Elle told me all about her private life I stopped seeing her in a sexual way.
I can relate in a way. In my very early adventures on-line (I am going back at least 10 years now) I discovered a chat room for people engaging in 'cybersex'. It was all amateurs, with no paywall or professionals, but thousands of members from all over the world.
I tried it a few times and it was okay. But the funny thing was that if you spent enough time on there, then the names all became familiar and all of the anonymous avatars start to develop personalities. It was no longer just anonymous cybersex with strangers. It wasn't long before you start to become acutely aware of the fact that it is another human being typing at the other end of the wire. Pretty soon you are PM-ing and then you are emailing.
At that point, I could never go back to the cybersex! Bearing in mind that the whole medium is built around dirty talk, I had decades of Catholic upbringing hardwired into my brain that says you don't talk that way to girls you respect. So I abandoned the cybering altogether and just found myself hanging out there for the chat.
I don't regret it. The chat room has since shut down, but I am still in touch with a few people from there. We get together now and then for a drink. I even dated a girl that I met on there for almost a year, before she moved away for work.
But I offer this story only to reinforce your point that -- for many of us -- once a rapport is struck that goes beyond immediate sexual gratification (and it doesn't take thousands of DMs to get there -- a dozen will do the trick!), then it is very difficult to once again think of that person in a sexual way.
In the same vein and informed by the same experience, I thought this line from Fan of Camilla was interesting.
(05-07-2015 09:22 )FanofCamilla Wrote: Unlike Forum Style, I would consider us friends, I've been talking to 1 of them for about 15 months and the other girl closer to 2 years, I know about their families, relationships, address, which makes me believe I'm more than just a fan boy (I guess someone will disagree with me).
I am not, by any means, suggesting that you are a 'fanboy'. To me, a fanboy is someone who mistakes 'acknowledgement' for affection.
But so long as a 'friendship' remains wholly online, then I struggle to equate that with an 'actual' friendship. Irrespective of how personal, honest and forthright she may be, if the entire relationship is conducted through a keyboard, then there is a built-in distance that -- in my view -- keeps it from being a genuine friendship.
It is almost a wholly new online thing for which we still don't have a proper name. It's like there are different 'states' of a relationship between a presenter and viewer:
1. Presenter/Fan. She sees you a customer; you look to her for sexual gratification.
2. Presenter/Acquaintance. She is no longer trying to flog you stuff and, like Forum Style, you may no longer be seeing her purely (or even at all) as a sexual object. The relationship has all the 'trappings' of friendship, inasmuch as you are regularly conversing and offering each other kindness and support. But it is all done at a distance and through a purely on-line relationship.
3. Presenter/Friend. In this sliding scale of my own invention, I wouldn't genuinely consider someone that I met on-line to be a "friend", unless we actually felt comfortable enough to contact each other outside the safety of the Internet.