For me, using the acronym RL (or the term "real life") as opposed to online activities is legitimate in some contexts. Take a look at some of these instances:
http://videogames.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Video_Game_Related_DeathsWhen someone becomes so obsessed with online games that everything else in his life is shoved out of the way, there is STARK OPPOSITION between his online life and his "real life" - to the point that his real life is damaged by his online fantasy life.
There's also this story -
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/10/woman-kills-baby-for-interrupting-farmville-session/"A 22 year-old woman from Jacksonsville, Florida has pleaded guilty to killing her baby son over a game of… Farmville. Alexandra V. Tobias says her three-month old child, Dylan Lee Edmondson, had been crying while she was trying to play the popular Facebook casual game. This angered Tobias, who told authorities that she shook the baby, had a cigarette to calm herself down, then shook him again. It’s believed he “may have hit his head during the shaking”. Dylan’s death was classified as second-degree murder, a charge that carries the possibility of a life sentence in prison."
But even that seems less "sick" than this extraordinary example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7376178/Korean-couple-let-baby-starve-to-death-while-caring-for-virtual-child.htmlKim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said. Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level. The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named. Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. "The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life, because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-won, a police officer in Suwon, the Seoul suburb, told the Yonhap news agency.
Less extreme examples are when married people suddenly become so obsessed with their Facebook friends that they seem to abandon their everyday lives and the people in those everyday lives. They can become secretive - hiding their Facebook from their partner - because mentally they are committing adultery. Look for example at this:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Adultery-2037/2009/4/Crushing-Facebook-Friend.htm. Single people too can become so utterly engrossed with their Facebook lives that their family and friends are ignored and treated as not real.
Their online lives become SO real that nothing else matters.
To that extent, I think it is legitimate to discuss "rl" and online lives as being disparate.
I am not talking about friendships formed online and kept in a balance with other friendships, or friendships that began online and are extended and maintained through meetings, phone calls, letters, etc., along with friendships that began through school, work, social activities, etc., which are also extended and maintained through meetings, phone calls, letters, etc. It's perfectly healthy. With the internet having blossomed into such a pivotal part of our society, we'd be fools if we denied the social opportunities of the internet as part of our society. But equally, we'd be fools if the internet REPLACED all other contact, or minimised other contact so as to damage our ability to interact face to face.
Does that make sense?
