In person, yes. But a vast amount of nonverbal communication simply isn't conveyed over the internet. You can't determine the expression on my face, my body language, my tone of voice, the volume and rhythm of my speech - no, these things are absent.
So you invent them. Your brain constructs its own little personal fiction of who I am and how I'm saying these words. I'm of the personal opinion - unsubstantiated by any expert - that this is an iterative process, and the unconscious mind actually evolves a mental image through a genetic process of editing the image and the verbiage alternately... resulting in the honest belief that different words were used, even when the textual evidence contradicts that hypothesis, and the simple inability of the mind to reconcile the difference. (This dovetails into Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding quite nicely, but that's a much longer discussion.)
Naturally, you behave in every respect as though the fiction you've created in your mind is reality, because of the whole existential thing. But when that fiction contradicts reality, you must correct it.
Did I mention I've been studying this particular area of human cultural interaction for over two decades? It was my first real "adult" interest in college. No matter; this is where the critical phase comes into it.
See, I like this subject. I think it's a fascinating and exciting topic. If we were talking in person, my facial expression and posture and body language would betray that - I would be speaking rapidly, animatedly, leaning forward and gesturing to emphasise my points. There would be no emotional content toward you whatsoever; my passions would be wholly directed toward, and consumed by, my knowledge of this topic.
But you might not imagine it that way. You might imagine me snorting, looking down my nose, and proclaiming icily that I know all these things which you do not, for you are some sort of strange insect crawling in my vicinity. How dare you bring your filthy ears within range of my clearly superior voice! I could be speaking to someone much more important, someone with much more intellect and capacity to understand.
And I can't control that. If you choose to believe that I'm speaking to you as an inferior instead of as an equal, there is nothing I can do to prevent it... but it's not reality. Your reaction to that mental image isn't a reaction to me; it's a reaction to a pure phantasm, proceeding from your own diseased imagination.
Think about that. It's an important component of understanding what a projected persona really is. Over the internet, people are boiled down to very tiny subsets of their real personalities, and there are a lot of shockingly inappropriate hash-space collisions.
Agreed. The performance has been turned into more of a ritual; people do pretty much the same routine all the time, and to be honest it's a good routine. But the cups have turned into something of a packaged effect in their own right. Whereas they used to be a tool to develop a routine, they've become every bit as prearranged as any single-trick DVD with enclosed gimmick.
