Is there really such a thing as 'Virtual Flirting'?

Hello 203 Co-Bloggers,

Re. Dr Goode’s question (in Lecture 2): Is there a prejudice towards the ‘notion of virtual’ – in that the idea of a ‘virtual community’ falls short of what’s considered a ‘real community’?

Extrapolating this out then….supposing that a ‘virtual community’ is not authentic, does this mean there’s a common notion that online flirting, on internet dating sites, isn’t really flirting – and it’s okay, because it’s only ‘virtual flirting’? Lévy and Turkle advocate that ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ are not always polar-opposites….but can we apply this argument to flirting?

And maybe somebody can confirm/deny the following theory? (But, it could be an urban tech-myth!):

Apparently, when DVDs were first produced, the original initials stood for ‘Digital Virtual Display’. However, marketing people thought the term ‘virtual’ would be off-putting to the general public (and difficult to explain) so they changed it to stand for ‘Digital Video Display’– even though DVDs are not actually videotape.

bests, AF

ps. 2 x Blogs this week as I couldn’t access the site last week!

(Blog Word Count = 170)