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The internet isn't fake, it's just entirely different from meeting in person.
You're anonymous
You're not exactly faceless since you likely have a profile picture/avatar, but that's quite different from a real face
You can't get interrupted
You have time to think out what you're going to say
You can edit what you say before you say it
You don't get to hear the words leave your mouth
you have considerably less power of inflection
The same rules apply to everyone you talk to.
So it makes for people to act not like themselves. What people forget is that they are building an online personality on message boards or chat rooms and if they use the same name, people remember them. . . so things that they say ultimately do have meaning. The more your online self matures, the more it acts like your offline self.
You realize you can't just blurt out whatever comes to your mind, you realize that maybe you shouldn't share everything, and you realize that while people may not call you out in real life, they definitely will online, so you have to be a bit more restrained even.
Of course private conversations are of a completely different nature than message board conversations, and I find myself still completely far too open when I talk to the right person in private.
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