Petanque!
I miss all my suits so very, very much.
i think it's fair to say that most (if not all) people who do so do it because they feel like they're missing something in their "real" social life. when you get enough people together who are missing the same thing from their lives, it's inevitably going to lead to a really intimate and tightly knit community like the one we have here, not to mention all the relationships that have sprung up from it as well
Absolutely. I love my meat-life friends a great deal and I'm very glad that I've still got the basic social group as I did in high school but in the intervening years, we've all changed a great deal and really I don't have much in common with them anymore (at least re: superficial stuff like movies and music), and in general I've just got a very different outlook on life. It's probable that a very large part of that is actually shaped by having spent a large amount of time on this board (and other places on the Internet too) but none of that would've happened if I wasn't receptive to it. Probably the majority of the art I enjoy these days, as well as many of the specifics regarding my current political views, are a direct result of things I've read on this board and conversations I've had with it's members.
And aside from a few select meat-life friends, I share way more about my life and my internal thoughts and feelings here than I do with anybody else. Partly this is because there are threads specifically designed for this kind of interaction but also because of the shared worldview that I have with a fairly large portion of the regulars here, I can be comfortable in any discourse that results from my confessionals.
I think it's fantastic and really very pragmatic. I no longer bother my meat-life friends with any of the weird stupid music I like and the generally pretty snarky way I view most pop-culture so it makes me a far more pleasant person to be around. I don't know what kind of insufferable asshole I'd be if I didn't have the kind of outlet that allows me (and is quite welcoming of) those impulses.
I guess this ties into the old phrase "you can choose yr friends but you can't choose yr family". It's just people of our era have a far better choice!