renaissance poisson

*nod* Very much my experience, too. I use LJ primarily as a virtual substitute for the paper journals I've kept most of my life; that it has an audience of sorts is usually nice, but sometimes counter to the purpose (chronicalling my own life, moods, etc.) It can feel a little like performance art, which is ... weird.

I still post to exactly two Usenet groups, and in one of them I've managed to be present enough, consistently enough, that it does feel like community/conversation, but if I let it slide for as much as a week, I begin to lose that feeling.

The bottom line, for me, is that no on-line forum comes close to matching the community I feel with people I interact with every day. The 'Net is good for many things - better, for some of them, than face-to-face interaction - but I still need meatspace for building an ongoing sense of community and commonality.