I can’t help feeling that “a girl was raped and murdered” is not a very appropriate lede for an article about semantic quibbling. After all, this debate has been going on ever since there were bulletin boards (as, lamentably, have cases like the Ashleigh Hall one).

I like to think I see Orr’s point: the Internet blurs the line between modes of communication and interaction, which is a worry because a blurred definition of reality is the last thing some people need, particularly if they spend a lot of time on the Internet. But to phrase her concerns as a matter of semantic precision (rather than a more general discussion of fantasy versus reality) lends a note of urgency to a discussion that I fear is never going to be resolved as cleanly as she and her ilk would like.

I guess what I’m saying is thanks for posting, Steven, it’s interesting food for thought.

I agree with sw’s #7.

Which of its propositions do you agree with? (It might help me to understand it better).

And my third intention was just to quibble with what Steven said about forums/blogs/networking sites that arrange to “meet-up” (rather than just “meet”). This is often true. But what one also finds (at least on a number of such sites that I have been party to) is the use of “meet” as a noun.

Yes, that’s true; what I meant was more that individuals who meet online might then meet up etc; but an online group can, as you say, arrange a meet (which is also AIUI used in American English for sporting occasions?).

The kind of communication that happens via, say, Facebook is completely different from what happens in an exchange of letters.

basically covers my second my point.

And my third intention was just to quibble with what Steven said about forums/blogs/networking sites that arrange to “meet-up” (rather than just “meet”). This is often true. But what one also finds (at least on a number of such sites that I have been party to) is the use of “meet” as a noun. This usage seems simultaneously to gesticulate towards the idea that “meeting” can only take place IRL (since presumably all of this non-physical activity then constitutes something other than “meeting”), whilst complicating or destabilizing that idea by presenting “meet” in an unfamiliar form (i.e. as a noun). (Note “unfamiliar” rather than “new”, though: in American English particularly, “meet” is sometimes substituted in for “meeting”. I think.)