Yesterday, I conducted an experiment. I asked people on my forum whether they thought they knew each other's genders. They said that they did. Then, after 2-3 months of them thinking I'm a guy, I gave them evidense that left them no choice but to conclude that I'm a girl. I didn't type one letter of lies though, just put the facts they took in a certain way into a different light. It was funny, but served to prove a point. No matter how well you think you know a person, you know very little of him/her. Even with "real life" friends, if you only see them for a limited time a day, chances are, they are a lot different from what you thought they were. The only things you can afford to take for truth is what the person says about himself.

Returning to the internet friends, I have several online friends who do drugs. One of them hasn't been online for more then half a year. I have no idea what happened to him. Maybe he got tired of Xbox, maybe he died. I have no information to prove one way or another. Once on a forum, a person told that he was being threatened, and when we started to help, another person said the thread was going off topic, and if something happened, we would know. How would we? In the end, it turned out to be a joke by a friends roomate, who got his foot broken because of the joke, but if it had been serious, and the person died, we would have no idea. I think it's strange that you might think you know a person, hang out with them, exchange information and ideas, and if something happened, to one of you, you would have no idea that the person died.