The nature of reality has been a contentious subject that has rattled the brains of the greatest philosophers and the drunkest college students. That subject has only been further complicated by the increasing presence of internet-enabled machines in every day life, leading to many people living existences primarily in an online world. Is this online world 'real'? Well, yes and no.

What got me thinking about the difference between the online and offline world is a passage by Annie Dillard. The essay, entitled "Total Eclipse," covers many topics, but what stuck out to me was her distinction between the surface world and the world deep in our minds. The surface world is where life happens. Dillard describes it as where we "join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet's crust." Notice that there is an emphasis on physicality and connection. We join with others, our bodies intermingling with the bodies of others. The phrase 'words and activities' implies figures moving and talking in a shared space. On the other side, Dillard depicts that "We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall." Whereas on the surface we are free and open and connected, in the watery depths of our minds, we are isolated and disconnected. For Dillard, the depths are insensible; they lack the fundamental connector between ourselves and others, our senses. Some may claim that the online world is purely a realm of our minds' depths. But, from my personal experiences, I believe there is more nuance.

Becoming a member of the social internet was a formative experience in my life. For my younger self, the regular world was rough. A combination of frequent school changes and workaholic parents made it difficult for me to make connections. The social internet gave me an alternative. In the real world, my friends consisted of those two classmates who just happened to play Minecraft. Online, there was a countless number of people who played Minecraft. As a result, the friends I made online liked me not just for my interests, since everyone played Minecraft, but for who I was as a person. In real life, I talked to others out of necessity, to ease loneliness. Online, I talked because I liked the people I talked to. On a Minecraft server, I felt like a human being for the first time. There I made my first honest friends, fell in love for the first time (and the second time), and felt loved and appreciated by others. Turning myself into video game data taught me how to join together with other humans.

This was all well and good for my online life, but I soon began to feel like my life had two different sides to it. In the real world, I was closed off and isolated. In the online world, fueled by the sounds and visuals of a computer, I felt love and connection. My natural ambition was not satisfied with an existence only half of the time. I thought, "Why not feel human all the time?" Seeking an answer, I turned away from my online life. What followed was years of experimenting, questioning, exploring, success, failure, isolation, and, at last, some semblance of connection with humans in the physical world. While my journey of discovery is far from over, today I know how to join human culture without the aid of digital translation.

Having lived in both the online and the offline spaces, the difference between them seems glaring to me. The warm hug of a friend greatly missed. The comforting voice from someone who loves you. These are experiences that are so far inexpressible through virtual means. Sure, one can make known the desire to hug through messages and emojis. But those words don't land on your skin and fill your being with warmth. Once you know that physical, real-world experience, anything online feels like a replacement, a holdover until the next opportunity to meet on the planet's crust. Because full connection with others, to join human culture, requires the physical component, many would argue that the online world exists solely in the depths of the mind, away from the surface world. To them, a simulation does not compare to the true experience.

I understand how someone could come to that conclusion. Yet, I ask myself, hadn't the words and activities online also joined me with humans? The evenings I spent building and playing with friends in a shared virtual world. The 12-hour silent skype calls that wordlessly conveyed "I am here, I care about you, I love you." At that time, I did not connect with people in-person, I connected with them in the virtual world.

This poses an issue for Dillard's dichotomy. The virtual world is not real by any physical definition. Online spaces exist solely as data on a computer. They only become real in the depths of our minds, what Dillard calls private and useless. Yet, in that virtual world, it is possible to form some level of connection with other people, providing some publicity and usefulness. How can this be possible?

Because the human brain is vaster than we anticipated. As Emily Dickinson long ago observed:

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

For Dillard, the waking world, the land of activities and connection, is rooted in reality. However, the brain is capable of recreating reality within its confines, allowing connection to be made through sounds on a speaker and pixels on a screen. Sure, credit must be given to the clever engineers and designers who created the interfaces and programs allowing that connection. But despite their efforts, there is a disconnect between the computer and humans which only the mind manages to fill. Connections in online spaces are only possible because the virtual world is experienced as real despite not being real. Through technology, the surface world can exist in the depths of your mind.

That is not to say that virtual realities and all connections are good. Filter bubbles and isolated online communities have contributed to an increasingly divided world. However, there are others who are like me. There are many people who struggle to connection, whose endeavors to join the culture around them continue to fail. For those people, going online is their primary path to joining and connecting. Many of them feel self-pity, believing that their connections are invalid for happening online. If you are one of those, know that even though the connections are not physically real, they are still real.