it is no different than if we were pen pals.
Having had a pen pal when I was in school, and then having had a child overseas I helped support through the Foster Parents Plan and wrote to regularly, I differ.
With pen pals, you write a letter and then wait two weeks or more for a reply. To which you reply then wait another two weeks. And you often send pictures and other momentos. (Also, you know the person's real name and where they live, and in the case of FP you know quite a bit about them from the field worker's reports.) Because of this, you put more effort into your letters since they go so occasionally, you tend to think more about what you are saying, and of course you're only writing for one person's eyes. And in addition you pay -- or at least I paid -- a lot more attention to what the other person said because you have so few words from them and they were written solely and specifically for you, and letters that you can touch and feel and put down and pick up are far different from electronic messages that flash by and are gone unless you make some effort to recover them from the huge pile of other messages flashing by.
And here, you're not writing to one person -- you're writing to a group of people that may include lurkers who never make their presence known. You have no real idea who you're writing to or who is reading what you're writing.
Lots has been said and written about the differences between email and real letters, how casual email is compared to a real letter. That goes in spades here, IMO.
No, for me at least this is a very different, far more casual, far less personal relationship than having a pen pal. |
