What kind of people are you looking for at Quora?

Tagged:

No one in particular.

I’ve participated in online communities like this one for a long, long time. I have found trying to build lasting friendships to be a mostly fruitless enterprise. For me, either you’re basically family, or you’re everybody else, and people slot themselves into one category or the other fairly quickly.

If you’re not basically family, especially if I just know you online, it’s not a matter of if you bounce, but when. Nothing against you, I’m sure you’re great people to get to know, but online brings out the worst in people and I haven’t been able to figure out how to get around that in the 20-odd years I’ve been online.

And sometimes for the silliest reasons too. When I was in my more spiritual days, one guy stopped talking to me because he thought I was letting some evil witch possess me.

More recently someone just got mad over something that was just in their head and blocked me without a second’s thought. I think I used too many smilies or something. Just irrational. I don’t have time to feed petty egos and tiptoe around people who are probably going to just bounce after awhile anyway for reasons that have nothing to do with me.

So I just look for interesting short-term discourse on an intellectual level. If I happen to make a personal connection along the way, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, let it run its course, and wish it well when it moves on. I have plenty of real family and friends in my real life to be bothered trying to build one online.