Most of my friends know each other, even if they’ve never met before. My online friends mingle with my real friends. Why? Well, that would be my fault.
It all boils down to this. When talking to people online, I get bored. No matter how interesting the person is, or how much I like them in real life (if applicable), overall, IM conversations are just moving lines of text that you have to read and respond to. I get tired of moving lines of text, and eventually, I cannot be bothered to think of a slightly witty response.
I will have my browser open. I will maybe listen to some music, watch a few videos, sometimes even a TV show when I get bored. This usually means I forget that I had a conversation window open and/or ignore the person I was talking to for hours on end.
And when I’m talking to two or more people online, that’s when things start to go wrong – I’m crap at multitasking. I’ll either get engrossed into one conversation and ignore the other completely, only respond intermittently or ignore them all.
This is why group conversations are good. I can add everyone I’m attempting to talk to into a group, and they can make awkward conversation and find out if they hate each other or not whilst I bugger off to watch that latest meme.
So, this is my disclaimer. If you ever find me on an instant messenger (I’m usually on Skype as Rammikins or MSN as glomprammi@glomp.me), be prepared to be added into conversations from time to time with complete strangers. It’s the price you pay for talking to me.
You’ll probably like the people I stick you in the conversation with. If you don’t, you can leave. But I probably won’t notice because I’m engrossed in something more interesting.*
Please stop ranting at me with the “OMG, why did you add me to this, Rammi?!” I’ll just ignore you.
*I didn’t mean it to sound that bad. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the people I talk to. I do. I just get easily distracted.

Twitter: staciemei
says:
LOL, what a fun thing to do to your friends! My brother is the champion of wandering away during IM conversations. (This was a problem sometimes while he was deployed in Iraq, and we’d be like, “O NO, where did he GO?!”)
You sound like a lot of fun, Rammi.
I know someone who used to do that with phones in college.