Imagine All the People

Recently I have been thinking about online communities. I belong to a couple. There are people I have never met whom I talk to or just read about. And I have found recently that I assign an image of what I think they are like in my mind. I don't think this is abnormal. I think everyone does it. We three dimensional flesh and blood creatures were not made truly to exist on cyber planes. And so we use reference points that allow us to ground ourselves. And it doesn't matter that these created points may be drastically incorrect.

One of my favorite photographers is one such person. Seeing as how he posts images of himself on his own blog, it is not that I do not know what he looks like. But an image is static. How one reacts and moves and sounds is not something that can be conveyed in an email or a still image.

Yet I find my mind has supplied these ghostly details. As I find it does for others as well. My world is populated by a selection of people who do not exist. Who have never existed. They are my own creations based on a reflection of something real.

How odd.