My life online made me find people with the same interests as me, no matter how rare. Chances of finding another person interested in say, synthesizers or ocaml letting 'fleshspace' serendipity do the work are negligible.
One other thing: Having an active social life can be costly, both online and offline. It's just that offline more people actually do it.
The equivalent of following hundreds of people on twitter and facebook in 'fleshspace' is to live in a house with guests (and flatmates) changing constantly. There are other situations in which one is forced to be hypersocial (maybe working at a bar? but that doesn't lead to intimacy), but this one I know first-hand. As anyone who has done the house thing can attest, it can be draining. You spread your attention to others very thin. And even so, the chances of meeting people you really like are not very high.
One other thing: Having an active social life can be costly, both online and offline. It's just that offline more people actually do it.
The equivalent of following hundreds of people on twitter and facebook in 'fleshspace' is to live in a house with guests (and flatmates) changing constantly. There are other situations in which one is forced to be hypersocial (maybe working at a bar? but that doesn't lead to intimacy), but this one I know first-hand. As anyone who has done the house thing can attest, it can be draining. You spread your attention to others very thin. And even so, the chances of meeting people you really like are not very high.