Tiinkerbelle said:
I am offended by your rude comment. They may just be a "pixel" but the are a real person with REAL feelings on the other side. And over a time period of months you really bond a friendship with someone, and it hurts the same JUST as in real life if one of your best friends was moving away and never had a way of talking to you. Those who don't feel anything may be heartless.
That may be a real person on the other end, but real friendship is based upon knowing another person, and interacting with them. On VMK you are not permitted to get to know another person at all. On fan sites, it is less true, as you can sort of get to know people here, but on VMK, you know nothing about the other person. That pixel could be a 9 year old girl, a 65 year old corporate lawyer, a 26 year old hospital intern. You don't know. It could be a preacher, a high school kid, a police officer or a serial murderer. You cannot tell. All you really know about someone is what their pixels display. Often, it is not at all similar to the real person. It is a character. We are all actors. Some of us even have multiple mules we play that project completely different personas. That could be a person with real feelings. It could also be a person with FAKE feelings. I was on another fansite once and saw a person post about how they get free stuff by pretending to be sad and depressed, and leaving VMK. All those people fooled by him felt sad that their "friend" was leaving VMK.
Again, I'm not judging anyone. This particular person might be known to others outside VMK. She might be a very nice person. I don't know. But many times, people get sad over another set of pixels disappearing, and what is truly sad is that they think they lost a friend. If this person leaves VMK and you will no longer be in touch with her, you did not lose a friend. You never had a friend in the first place.
I am not trying to flame anyone. I'm trying to help people put things into perspective. You can call it rude if you like, but if you disagree with me, you might be precisely the kind of person who should take this advice to heart: if losing access to a character played by an actor or an anonymous computer user makes you feel like you lost a true friend, you really should work on making more or better friendships in the real world. Those are the friendships that will make you happy. These are not.
And, by the way, someone leaving VMK is not necessarily a bad thing. Spending more time in the real world is actually a good thing. In fact, I'm going to stop typing right now and go have lunch with my friends at work.
Today we lost a good VMKer. Her nick name.."Slim". No one knows why she is leaving and we will all miss her. I will keep her on my friends list hoping she will come back. She gave all her items away including her stitch hat and cyan ariel chest for free 
I hope it's true.
