>>Jay,
>>
>>How I am in person is how I am here. Six foot one, BTW.:-)
>
>It's kind of interesting, because that's really what I thought you were going to say. Some people, myself included, probably feel that it's somewhat of a cyberworld, like a game almost. I wonder if it makes a difference for the ones that have had real world face-to-face contact with other members? It's easy to always see them as their icon-sized picture, or as the printed name, but when you actually have met them, would it still be the same? Tracy brings up a great point also about how we read only what interest us, and that in itself affects the part of us that's displayed here.

I've had this experience quite a number of times, with having seen the person picture previously as well as not.

The first time you see someone you know online (and text-only) for years, you're shocked. You'd never expect them to look that way. After two minutes, you conclude there's no way they could look any other way.

As to the personae, it's probably how the people react to different media. I knew a guy whose voice would turn oratory each time you nudged a microphone his way, but would speak normally otherwise. Or, the way that people change their behavior when a lens is pointed to them. I think the online persona is another similar idiosyncrasy - just as you don't write a letter using the same language as you regularly do, you don't always feel yourself when writing online.

A part of this different feel may as well be due to difference between the way we think when we speak and when we write. To some, there's nearly no difference - others, then, may not type as fast as they speak, which gives them time to rethink the sentence, and even get carried off by the style they think they achieve. Me included :).

Besides... there's the delete key, which I can't find anywhere in my speaking hardware. Sometimes I wish I could.