Real life

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Real life is an actual event or life lived by real people, contrasted to that lived by fiction or fantasy characters, or real people interacting on the Internet.^[1]

Usage online and in fiction

On the Internet, "real life" refers to life in the real world. It generally references life or consensus reality, in contrast to an environment seen as fiction or fantasy, such as virtual reality, lifelike experience, dreams, novels, or movies. Online, the acronym "IRL" stands for "in real life", with the meaning "not on the Internet".^[2]

When used to distinguish from fictional worlds or universes against the consensus reality of the reader, the term has a long history:

Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot^[3]

In its use for differentiating online personal worlds from "offline" life, the term has a much shorter history and a more unclear future, as the Internet has existed for a much shorter time. Sociologists engaged in the study of the Internet have determined that someday, a distinction between online and real-life worlds may seem "quaint", noting that certain types of online activity, such as sexual intrigues, have already made a full transition to complete legitimacy and "reality".^[4]

"Real life" is sometimes a controversial term, describing "productive" activities, such as working, in contrast to "unproductive" (leisure) activities. Outside of fictional worlds, the phrase is often used to compare a more traditional way of living against a pejoratively depicted existence, such as academic life, in a manner similar to the term "real world".^[5] A person with experience in "real life" or the "real world" has experience beyond book learning.

Related terminology

The abbreviation "RL" stands for "real life". For example, one can speak of "meeting in RL" someone whom one has met in a chat or on an Internet forum. It may also be used to express an inability to use the Internet for a time due to "RL problems". Similarly, the phrase "in real life" is often replaced with the acronym "IRL". Some prefer the expression "face-to-face", abbreviated "f2f". Some Internet users use the idioms face time or "meatspace" or "meat world", which contrasts with the term "cyberspace".^[6][7] "Meatspace" has appeared in the Financial Times^[8] and in science fiction literature.^[9] Some early uses of the term include a post to the Usenet newsgroup austin.public-net in 1993^[10] and an article in the Seattle Times about John Perry Barlow in 1995.^[11] The term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2000.^[12] The terms "meatspace" and "meat world" are apparently derived originally from the science fiction novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, published in 1984. In the novel, the anti-hero of the novel, Henry Dorset Case, works as a hacker in a virtual reality data space in cyberspace (a term also coined by William Gibson in 1981) called the "Matrix". Case describes his physical body as his "meat self" and in the early mid 21st century when the novel takes place, prostitutes are described as "meat puppets". Gibson apparently derived this term from the punk rock band Meat Puppets, founded in 1980.^[13]

See also

• In Real Life, a TV reality show for kids
• Lifelike experience
• Off-line
• Reality
• Virtual reality
• Brick and mortar business
• Face time
• Face-to-face
• Online and offline

References

External links

Look up real life in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up meatspace in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Meatspace from the Jargon File.
• Meatspace from Oxford Dictionaries Online
• "Origin of the term meatspace?". http://ask.metafilter.com/15851/Origin-of-the-term-meatspace. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
• "Word Spy - meatspace". http://www.wordspy.com/words/meatspace.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-02.