My online relationships have been:

[jacques]

Fun

 17/8%

Risky

 3/1%

Bizarre

 7/3%

Enduring

 3/1%

Profitable

 6/3%

Educational

 18/8%

Life changing

 14/6%

Time consuming

 16/7%

Comforting

 4/2%

Upsetting

 0/0%

Complex

 6/3%

Just fine

 14/6%

Pugnacious

 1/0%

Disappointing

 11/5%

Like a box of chocolates

 36/16%

All of the above

 70/31%

226 total votes

[john_oshea]

No entry for:

with horny supermodels who were strangely into World of Warcraft and tweaking their Gentoo systems

? ;-)

[greenFox]

I think that is likely to be the "Bizarre" option... :-)

[holli]

/me misses wet 'n lewdly ;)

[marto]

<joke>a contributing factor in my recent incarceration</joke>

Martin

[bart]

I take the people in the Chatterbox as online relationships, so, it's been mostly fun, and most of all, time consuming, thus far.

[wolfger]

All of the above, because I've had a lot of online relationships. From the lamer I had a flame war with on Slashdot (I know, I know, I shouldn't indulge in flame wars, feeding trolls, etc) to the woman I met online (pre-internet access, even) and am still married to nearly 20 years later.

[greenFox]

Definately all of Fun, Bizarre, Enduring, Educational, Time consuming, Comforting, Upsetting, Complex, and Just fine ... I voted for "Like a box of chocolates" as a best fit but Pugnacious is such a rich sounding word I really wanted to vote for it too :)

[wsheehan]

I met this chick once on Hot or Not. During our first month of AIM conversations, I wrote a perl script that showed two stick figures moving around and said it was us dancing (I'm such a charmer :P). Anyway, after said month, we decided to meet up. Unfortunately for me, "she" turned out to be a 40 year old man :(


Except not really. She was awesome and we got married this past October.

[kwaping]

I take it you voted her as "Hot". :)

[tweetiepooh]

I met my wife online. Actually she found me on a UK based Christian singles site, saw my entry and got in contact.

At first meeting I just wanted to be friends, at the second something happened and in 2001 we were married.

Only partially online I know but hopefully it still counts.

[Ben Win Lue]

Actually, I do not really have had any online relationship, Ok PerlMonks can be considered as an online relationship, so it is definately educational

Well, there are some online relationships to people I happened to meet in real live, and we stay in touch online. But this is more or less a substitution of the telephone...

[Happy-the-monk]

All of the above... and more.

But I guess I'm a cheat at online relationships of any kind, I have alsways tried hard to make them offline relationships as soon as possible, being a good perl monger ;-)

Cheers, Sören

[tbone1]

Relationships?!?! Hm, is anyone else tempted to quote from Repo Man?
Leila: What about our relationship?
Otto: What?
Leila: Our relationship!
Otto: **** that!

[OfficeLinebacker]

I probably should have chosen "Enduring" but I chose life changing because I met my wife online! Married 8 months Thursday. Couldn't be happier. :)

[SirBones]

"Online relationships"? As opposed to what?

[wfsp]

Like good chemistry.

[BerntB]

Oh oh...

Most "good" chemistry is poisonous &&/|| illegal &&/|| explosive &&/|| corrosive!

(The rest of chemistry is mostly boring.)

Update:
To be clear -- ":-)". Also, the stated opinion is probably not shared by many, not even by me (much of the non-"good" chemistry is interesting, not boring.)

[ChemBoy]

Hey! :-P

[gloryhack]

Just like my real world relationships. They quickly grow wearisome, even when they're profitable.

[nimdokk]

I'd say educational because I try to learn from everything (doesn't always work - but I try :-) Online relationships (some of them) have shown me what I don't want (and what I do since I am in a very nice relationship at the moment that started out online). I personally think online relationships are not much different from offline relationships it's primarily the medium that is different.

[gube]

My online relationships have been Educational..

[TedPride]

I don't really have any online relationships (defined as doing more than saying hi every few weeks) outside of work, so I'm going with profitable. You guys are all nice, but I relate to your code more than you personally. Sorry! :)

[spiritway]

Messy. Maybe like a box of chocolates in August, sitting in your car window with the sun beating down mercilessly in the middle of the desert... and the car's on fire.

[blue_cowdawg]

Maybe like a box of chocolates in August, sitting in your car window

Now... that's messy! But then... the right kind of messy can be quite fun! :^)

[ashokpj]

Is very helpful to me..........

[mk.]

inexistent, actually.
but i can see i'm not alone! ;p

[blue_cowdawg]

Definitely all the above. One minute I'm in a serious discussion with someone about highly technical issues and the next I'm writing posts to a newsgroup from the viewpoint of my cat.

Online you can be whoever you want to be and nobody cares!

On the other hand if you try and fake things too hard you will be found out and summarily beaten to death on line!

Online relationships that I've had in some ways mirror Real Life™ and what I've seen is people tend to act "more themselves" on line than they'd like to admit.

What I mean by that is if your are an anal associative personality (fancy words for a much shorter reference to a dirtier part of the human anatomy) you tend to act like on online and in some cases folks like that are more so because of the anonymous nature of being online.

We've all met trolls online I'm sure.

On the other hand folks that are more mature and reasonable tend to reflect that nature online.

What I find sad in a way is there are folks that I've met online over the last bunch of years that I only know as online personalities and due to geographic limitations I'll probably never meet them in person. I guess that is better than not knowing them at all.

[tbone1]

Sadly, shouldn't "illegal" be an option?

Sincerely,
Pete Townsend and Gary Glitter


(You know, I'm almost too ashamed to submit this. Almost, but not quite.)

[kitty]

I agree, most people treat online relations as the 'other' woma(e)n/ma(e)n in their lives. Apart from that sad usage, i guess its got to be educational.

[Anonymous Monk]

I agree online realtionships can be fun cause you can be a tease but they can be very weird and give you inaccurate information about themselves and thier mommies!