Does interaction on WP have any impact offline?

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It's the other way around for me. The things that happen to me in real life influence what I post on WP. I use WP in such a way that the people here know me as much as my friends and family do. I've been merging my WP and offline line since the September of 2009.

Yes, but not by teaching me interaction skills. It has an impact by teaching me what are AS traits, and by extension what NTs may find hard to understand about me.

To be honest it tends to make me angrier and more bitter, and feel sorrier for myself. Not really a good influence.

For me,,it has been a great resource of information,, and knowing that Im not a crazy freak,,but that there is an entire population of people out there that I fit into andcan relate to..it helps me by reading others experiences..to clarify my own,,to understand why things happen to me theway they do and to work out adaptations and accommodations..in a world of NTS,, it is good to know there are people like me.

Yes.

Pros: I get to learn from others trials & mistakes and descriptions of their traits etc. It helps in dealing with myself, NT's, as well as other Aspies in person as I then have a better more well rounded understanding of all things related. It's nice to know what solutions others have found, or even to know what their traits are that I don't have as then when I come up against them in my life w/ other Aspies I'm better able to deal with them vs. allow them to frustrate me. That's actually really, really, valuable.

Con: Like with anything, I can get lost in reading/replying to forum posts and spend too much time doing it that I ought to have spent on something more productive that's of more immediate importance in real life. It shouldn't be too difficult to meter the amount of time I spend on here, though.

I also have learned things one here that I hadn't heard anywhere else, and I'm grateful for that.

The one thing that bothers me about WP (and this is a good thing for most people that has a negative effect for me personally) is that there are so many people on here, that it's very rare I'll get to talk to the same person twice in a month. I can see if I spent hours on here how that would be different, but I'm working on improving my life away from being online right now and don't have the time to sit in front of the computer that long. It would be really nice to find other people on here and actually become friends with them, but that must be a quite a time investment to make that happen.

Maybe meetups should be organized in different parts of the world (since this forum is worldwide), and AS people could meet in person based on common interests?

^ that's what sending private messages is for.

Also, I dunno about the rest of you, but I tend to have the trait of being able to be away from a friend for even months at a time and not really miss them or anyone, and then pickup right where we left off the next time we see each other or chat etc. I bet there are a lot of us like that on here, so even if you only chat once a month or every few months, you can still keep in touch with people - especially people like us who tend to do that kind of thing.

I'd hope that's the direction that WP is moving towards. It's a matter of getting that critical mass for Aspies to meet.

The largest number of WPers are in the United States, which is one of the most spread out English speaking developed countries. Transportation and distances are an issue.

I really shouldn't be complaining about meeting other aspies, because I live in the Boston area and there is more support here than anywhere else on the planet. Right planet, but not that many places for it ...

Salem, I have to admit I don't understand what you mean in the bolded part of your sentence.

It might've used to.

Looking at the perspectives and experiences of the people here on WP, I feel I'm not alone and I finally feel I, at least loosely, belong to a group of people for the first time in my life. So in that sense I'm gaining a small amount of self-worth here though I still have a long way to go in becoming confident. That has led to my not really caring for the majority of the people around me in real life. It could be seen negatively because I now don't bother to try to please people around me. I have stopped trying to greet or smile at those people that are not worth it, because I truly believe those who don't respect me don't deserve my respect. I still feel inner peace despite the fact many people don't think well of me. So as far as I'm concerned it's all positive, but others around me might see it rather negatively.

Wrong Planet is like this sometimes, and it depends largely upon the crowd posting at any particular time. When WP becomes overrun by members of a specific group, movement or belief, e.g. pro-cure/ anti-cure, it's best just to stay away until things get a little better. WP goes through these phases from time to time, and it's best just to wait for them to clear up, rather than allowing them to have an adverse effect on your life.

I mean that there is the potential for there to be support for aspies everywhere on this planet, but in reality they just have never materialized. I'm lucky in that in New England there are many groups at the present time. I suppose that could change in a heartbeat if funding or staffing or both were slashed. For the moment, however, it's a good place to find help. I'm in one support group hosted by the AANE (the Asperger's Association of New England), I go to a therapist whose specialty is gay men with Asperger's, and I go to special events hosted by the AANE (one of these was a lecture by David and Kristen Finch -- David wrote The Journal of Best Practices, about how a neurotypically mixed marriage could work).

I just kind of exchange ideas here. Interaction is... problematic for me.

You mean there isn't Ice Cream?! D=

But in all seriousness, I do usually keep my online life and offline life separate, and that goes for everywhere I go online not just here, although there are times where one will influence the other