How well can you know someone, really know them, from the internet?

you cant

It's a start -- but it can be a better one than the detractors will allow for. :-)

Intellectually and philosophically, very well, but unless you meet people and spend lots of time with them you won't know how they apply their thoughts and what their habits are like, and that's a big part of someone's personality.

I knew you all intimately — worse luck — before the interweb ever existed. It just confirms my fears.

You didn't know me *that* intimately, dear. But the one night with the sailors was interesting, true.

what have i stumbled in upon here?

Mark: you mean you intimately knew a nine-year-old boy, 25 miles and 10 light years from Charing Cross, who thought "Rattle and Hum" was quite a good, soulful record from what little he'd heard of it, and would have thought anyone resigning from any job over such a matter was the most distant, incomprehensible, absurd thing in the world?

Oh no. I simply can't believe that :).

You can't know strangers better, but you can get to know your friends better, cos when people write things down they don't go away, and you don't have to wonder whether you imagined it

you can't "know" me.

i don't think you can ever really know someone.

You can kid yourself you know somebody if you're that way inclined.

Whatever do you mean.............

Internet is where you could meet people...a sustainable friendship is only really possible by using other means of contact.

"I don't know" is the answer to the question, but then part of friendship maybe is accepting that you know somebody as well as you know them, and that's that.

I love meeting people who I only know on the Internet - I'm almost always surprised, and generally in a good way. As for friendship on the Internet generally...I have found that it can, sometimes, be easier to talk about personal stuff, to confide and advise, with people you only know online because they aren't involved with you and your social circle, and their perspective can be useful. You only need to look at some of the threads on this forum to see people doing that.

But doing that involves a certain amount of honesty about yourself, too, otherwise what they say is useless. So ideally the friendship, and confidence, and so on should be mutual. I probably did used to think no, you can't be proper friends with somebody on the Internet, it's not the same.

Now I think it's harder but you can have a deep and worthwhile and hopefully lasting friendship with somebody you only know online. They don't neccessarily know the texture of your offline presence - the tone of voice, the body language, how you smile, the repartee, the general hanging out - and that is a big loss. But e-mail and chat and forum stuff has a texture of its own in any case.

So brief and banal summary - with any friendship you get out what you put in. Internet friendships are no different really.