This thread has started to open my eyes a bit to the reality we live in. Never understood how teenagers kill themselves over being "bullied" on social media, but now I am beginning to see it.
The inability to distinguish between reality and virtual reality is becoming blurred for some of those teens, and as demonstrated in this thread, for adults as well. Internet forums are not "reality", forum members are not your "friends". Your friends come to your house and have face to face conversations, hang out with you and generally speaking are involved in your daily living. That is reality.
This is an internet forum, and as such it is not real, it is simply a group of people with an unusual interest in cycling that have formed a "social" network in a virtual reality world. We really don't know each other other than what we "talk" about on line in this forum. I am certain there are exceptions, as some of the forum members may actually hang out with each other during the course of the week.
Simply put, keep things in perspective, choose to engage in reading a thread or not, but to get upset over comments made is a bit weird to me.
Of course, those that know me know I am weird myself!