I guess you could say I'm one of the 'little people'. Someone who isn't famous or rich or particularly beautiful or powerful. So I'm in great company, since most of the world is also none of those things. In our Western society it seems we are almost constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we should be famous or rich or beautiful or powerful and if you just buy this product or go on that diet, it will come true. We really mess ourselves up with these messages.
To those who say it doesn't have an impact we only need to look at how we treat those who are the above compared to how we treat those who aren't. I believe it has a lot to do with the poliferation of online chat rooms and games - you can be who you want to be and no one will know you aren't, unless you reveal it in some fashion. This thought is nothing new or unique to me of course.
I participate in a number of online communities and find good and close friendships with people I would never have associated with in real life because they would not have fallen into any group or category that my reach would encompass. Perhaps at their best these online communities can teach us how to accept people without the baggage of the physical and other trappings of life in the real world. At their worst they provide an outlet for all sorts of anti-social behavior because the constraints that govern our lives may not exist. Also, while the feelings for one another can be very powerful they are not an adequate substitute for the associations we have in 'real life'.
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