INTIMATE STRANGERS

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When she first joined ECHO, an East Coast electronic community, Marcia Bowe dubbed herself ``Miss Outer Buro 1991,'' a handle that facetiously implied beauty queen-like poise, glamour, congeniality. And soon enough, Bowe was enjoying the adulation of fellow ``ECHOids'' who posted messages praising her wit, candor and smarts. Such celebrity was heady stuff for Bowe, a free-lance writer who describes herself in real life as shy and wary of emotional encounters. ``I became addicted to this constant stream of approval,'' she says. ``It was like a big co-dependency machine.'' As Bowe began spending up to 100 hours a month online, however, her life began to take on the burdens of celebrity. ``Some people were envious of me,'' she says. ``They accused me of snobbery and elitism.'' More disturbing, Bowe began to realize that her own hyperactivity was masking an underlying unhappiness with her life. So she dropped out of ECHO, cold turkey. ``I had forgotten that the real world is so complex and fascinating.'' She's back in cyberspace now, this time in a paid position at ECHO overseeing its 54 conferences, but she has learned to navigate online with greater perspective and a thicker skin. That doesn't mean she's become detached, though. ``This is an emotional place, not just a communications device,'' she says. All of this may sound strangely overwrought to those who have yet to venture online. The Internet, after all, has been touted largely as an unwalled repository of raw data, not of raw emotions. But the truth is that the vast majority of people who troll the Internet's byways are there in search of social interaction, not just sterile information. An estimated 80% of all users are looking for contact and commonality, companionship and community -- all the conjugations implied by E.M. Forster's famous injunction ``Only connect!'' Relationships can be complicated in cyberspace because the very technology that draws most people together also keeps them apart. Over time, the safe sense of distance that initially seems so liberating to newcomers on the Net can become an obstacle to deepening the bonds of friendship, romance and community. At some point, most networkers often find, the only real way to move a relationship forward is to risk personal contact -- and then hope the phantom bond will hold up in the 3-D world. ``You can't lead a total life online,'' says Dave Hughes, founder of the Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage, a cybersettlement. ``But if it's done right, online communication can lead to face-to-face contact, not away from it.'' At its best, the sprawling Internet brings together people with mutual interests who, for reasons ranging from geography to social and income disparity, would otherwise never have met. These virtual friendships can lead to physical encounters that may cement lifelong relationships. ``The cybercommunity is not separate from your community of friends; it's just not geographically local,'' says Carolyn Ybarra, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. When Ybarra moved west from Minneapolis, her online quilting group threw an in-person farewell party. Since then, she has become good friends with two of her fellow quilters, keeping in constant touch online. ``I feel just as close to these women as I do to my college friends,'' she says. ``I tell them more up-to-date details of my personal life, more often, because their response is so quick.'' Ybarra was fortunate to encounter