Online Behaviour vs Offline Behavior

I wanted to do a blog post on this topic when a friend of mine got enraged from my comments on Facebook although not directed at him. He even called me on phone & threatened to not make such comments again. In his anger he even said that i am 180 degree opposite of what i am offline. Although i will not go into much detail here as it is personal but still i would really like to think upon this aspect of our personality that is it true that our online behavior is different from our offline behavior?

Let's start with our offline behavior, we engage with other people in our daily lives at various junctures, whether it be at home, office, market, Gym, Park etc. We do official work at the office, at the same time we have fun with our colleagues. We do meetings with our clients or prospects. At home, we interact with our parents, have breakfast or dinner together & discuss various things or news with each other. We have a particular style of talking to different people at different situations. With friends we can joke around & talk all the rubbish stuff which we can't do with our parents or elders. At office our talks mostly pertain to official matters, new deals, things to do etc. Sometimes we are serious, at other times we laugh. With some, we have cordial relationship while with others it's bad which we try to turn around into positive. There are so many possibilities in the life of an average human being that we may have to write a separate book on it. And every person's behavior is different from any other person. It can't be same for even 2 persons. Some may like your behavior, while others hate it. Personally, i try to behave naturally with anyone in any situation. I have a firm belief that natural behavior always lets you take the right action.

On the other hand online behavior doesn't require that much effort as required in offline since offline involves all your senses plus physical action whereas for online even a smart phone is enough. On online mediums we don't have physical contact & no real face to face interaction although we can see each other's face digitally & converse over many devices these days. But the point is lack of physical presence actually makes you more creative & at times spices up the words you use in online chats or on facebook/twitter etc. We even tend to loosen up with someone on social networking sites even if haven't interacted with that person even though he may from your school, college or office where you could have easily interacted with him. These days so many dating sites are doing a lot of business but why? Because, people feel it easier to converse with each other with spicy messages & smileys on social networking sites rather than starting the discussion online. From online they take it offline latter on these cases. Sometimes, we tend to pull each other's legs (inherent in our nature) on social networking sites especially on facebook since it has it's own culture with pokes & multiple friends conversing under the same thread where we take stand on some point. Whereas in offline world, we usually tend to avoid heated discussions as it may lead to fights or confrontations. Anyway there is a risk of misinterpretation of your online comments because they have no emotions & emphasis attached to them, you mean to say something but it is interpreted in a totally different way!

So, the point is online mediums make it lot easier for us to express ourselves in various ways. Many things which we would like to share offline but couldn't share are shared easily in status updates on facebook & twitter. So, definitely there is marked difference between our online & offline behavior & it is up to the other people how they interpret our messages & even we need to take care from our side not to hurt anyone intentionally.