Steven Levine writes: A common soc.motss problem is that people -- particularly newcomers -- have trouble distinguishing individuals.
Yes. It took me a week or two to be able to make out even a few personalities. The first people to be distinct individuals for me here were Jess, Melinda, Rob Bernardo, Jojo, and Clay Bond. Everyone else sort of blurred into a massive blob. It wasn't really until I posted something that developed into a very long thread (about having just discovered something I wrote in the 1st grade about wanting to be Sleeping Beauty and having a horse named Becky) that I started being able to distinguish most of the regulars from each other. It's too bad, really. Just after I appeared here -- I had posted at most 3 or 4 things -- I got mail from Howard inviting me to a party he and Ken were giving for Jojo. It was one of the first pieces of mail I received and it sort of frightened me. But I wrote him back and asked for directions. I was really quite scared about this party with all these strange computer people (or so I imagined), but I decided to go anyway. I started out fairly late and got to within a couple of blocks of Howard and Ken's apartment and then chickened out and went out to dinner somewhere instead. I'm really sorry now that I did that. As it was, I didn't end up meeting Howard until about 6 or 7 months later.
Me neither, really, but in all of my travels in the last four years I've hooked up with soc.motss people in smaller gatherings. I recommend this very highly.
I recommend it too. Why, just within the last month or so I've met all sorts of wonderful motssisti -- from you to Don Huppert (hi Don!) to Melinda to Stephanie to Kristin (a walking, talking definition of "straight acting", down to and including ripply abdominal muscles) to Vadim (hi Vadim!) to Anneli and on and on, all in the context of smallish dinner parties or other small gatherings.
I have written before that when I meet someone in person I have previously known only through the Net and email, they have never been different than I expected but they have always been more than I expected.
Oh, pooh. Come on and admit it, Steven, wasn't I much more
butch and straight-acting and, well, a totally hot buffed babe, than
you had dared to imagine?
