Knowing Strangers…

Slugger is a community, even though it’s online, and when you have been part of it as long as I have, you do get to know people.

We don’t know what most posters look like, what they do for a living or often even their real names. Over time, we learn their politics, how they see the world and their little quirks.

I’ve noticed that some people seem to be all argument. They can post hundreds of comments, yet you still have very little sense of who they are as people. Without that gradual sense of the person behind the words, the conversations remain strangely hollow.

So we learn who it’s best to avoid, who we have a rapport with, and just sometimes a conversation becomes memorable. I’ve had a few of those, and some feel a little bittersweet now because over the years people have come and gone.

It is strange to look back under old OPs and see conversations frozen in time. People who were once regulars are no longer here, some because they chose to leave. Others, like the late Robert Campbell, are sadly missed.

The conversations I value most are the ones that offer an insight into someone else’s way of thinking, often someone whose path I would be very unlikely to cross in real life. Occasionally I discover that we notice the same things, despite having lived very different lives. Other times I find myself intrigued by how someone reaches conclusions so different from my own. I have wonderful friends in real life, but on Slugger I can have conversations I wouldn’t otherwise have. There is a kind of geek in me, and I can be that person on Slugger.

Here, we know people almost entirely by what they write. When you’ve read thousands of someone’s comments over the course of years, you inevitably feel that you know something of them.

I have met a few fellow Sluggerites in real life, and meeting them has only added another layer to that sense of connection. Without exception, everyone has been lovely. Seeing the whole person actually makes me more generous in the way I respond to them, even when I disagree strongly.

When someone I’ve read for years disappears, I find myself wondering why they left. Sometimes there is no goodbye. Perhaps it was a decision made in the heat of the moment, perhaps not. Either way, I wish people realised that their absence is noticed and that they leave a gap.

It turns out you can know strangers well enough to miss them.