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You are certainly correct on everything you mentioned, and I will go one step further. People do not talk face to face much anymore, and they have forgotten how to communicate. They only know email, text messaging, and any other way they can communicate except face to face. I learned many years ago that when you communicate via anything but personal contact where the person cannot read your facial expressions and body language you can get into a world of trouble without even realizing it. Everything is deemed stronger to the recipient (of any typed message) and that is how fights start on venues like the Freerepublic. People lose control and say things that they would never say in person to the recipient's face. It is so much more than people bore each other today, and do not know how to carry on a face to face conversation, it is that if the person is there in front of them they cannot multitask like you can when you are on the phone or computer with them. People play computer games by themselves now instead of playing Monopoly or Card games with a group having snacks and enjoying each other's company. I hope this makes sense to everyone, it is so obvious to me.

Absolutely I agree and one of the very reasons that unless the person is in another country I will not communicate by email or text messaging.

I only use text messaging on my phone for one person and she is a fellow freeper I have seen so much damage done to friendships by phone texting where one person or the other has got the wrong end of stick and caused so much friction before they met and the context and what she actually meant was clarified by that time half their group of friends were up in arms and had come down on one side or another.

Face to face contact is the only way you can really read what someone is saying and I agree that is why we have so many disputes on FR mainly as you say because people feel liberated to say things that in real life they would not dream of saying.