Online intimacy: On crushes and stalkers

From Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach

As in the transient family, one finds with Internet relationships that larger appeal to sentiment or obligation on the basis of nearness or proximity often have little authority. Rather, there is a large pool of potential contacts that can be realized for either or both of two main reasons, one being to create bonds of affection, sometimes including deep intimacy and acts of confession. The other is to engage in mutual communication in order to fulfil some largely pragmatic and perhaps fortuitous need… Many of the random chat links are based around discussions of such things as how to deal with nagging parents or teachers, or persistent ex-boyfriends.
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As a result the presence of the correspondent cannot be taken for granted. It follows that there is a constant need to recreate the mutuality of the relationship. This works for both short- and long-term relationships… So, as in transient kinship, Internet relationships are more dyadic, voluntaristic and based on the continuity of their re-constitution through constant acts of exchange. This is not to say that the relationships are more superficial or less normative or lacking in the possibility of affection; but rather it makes these compatible with using relationships to objectify a project of freedom as a central value of modernity.