> I was flipping through a magazine (The Year in Pictures, a TIME special edition) and found this:
>
> "When you spend your time on the Internet, you don't hear a human voice and you never get a hug." ~~ Norman Nie, a political scientist at Stanford University who researched potentially negative effects of the Internet.
>
> Obviously he didn't know about RinkWorks.

I agree with you, if you mean RinkWorks is a much more caring community than is usually found online. Even so, I agree more with what Nie said. You can spend all your online time at Rinkworks, but no matter how many times people type "/me HUGS HUGS HUGS you!" in chat, you are still not getting a hug.

It's nice to know people would give you a hug if they could, and it does make a positive difference to know you have friends out there. It can make your day sometimes. But you are still not getting a hug.

If someone goes through life without often getting a hug or hearing a human voice -- IN PERSON -- there is something seriously lacking in their life and no amount of chatroom hugs is going to make up for that.

RinkWorks has had a huge positive effect on me personally, and I know it has for many other people here too. However, if my entire interaction with people consisted of RinkWorks, I wouldn't hesitate to call that a negative thing.

Brunnen-"knowledge of hugs negligible, knowledge of human nature pretty good though"G