Another thought of mine was: What if all of those people who claim to be virtual friends met? Would they really like each other. I mean (as you've already mentioned: electronic communication leaves us blind to the people we're communicating with) getting to know a person by merely reading his/her emails doesn't tell us much about the actual person and his/her character. The text you see infront of your eyes is just a tool for me to let you know what I think and it is a very limited tool. It doesn't bring out the real me - at all. Look around you, and you'll notice how different people are, but look at the email messages - don't they just give you a sense of lost individuality, of digitalisation of people? (of course there are many options as how to compose your message, but compared to the variety of characters they are nothing)