Say you're traveling and finally get to meet a longtime e-pal from your fantasy baseball league ... in person. Over drinks, though, years of easy online banter and Bull Durham in-jokes are replaced by awkward silences. Shifting an Internet friendship into the real world can be trickier than hitting a knuckleball.
Often, the trouble isn't what you're saying but how you're saying it. Language is more than words. It also includes kinesics (body language) and paralanguage (pitch, tone, and wordless noises). And not everyone interprets these signals the same way, says Nancy Baym, who studies online communications at the University of Kansas. 
If you and your buddy aren't on the same wavelength, the flood of ambiguous nonverbal cues can lead to misunderstanding and befuddlement.
Of course, it might simply be that your online pal is different in person. With all his snappy posts and ripostes, you may have come to think of him as quick-witted. But what's fast in message-board land can feel slower than dialup in a face-to-face exchange. "Sometimes good online socializers are shy in person," Baym says. "Their medium is the written word."
One way to ease the transition, she suggests, is to open a limited, private, nontext channel before you meet in person. Pick up the phone or start a video chat. This will help you learn to interpret one another in a low-pressure situation. Or you could always just sit across the table from each other and send text messages. Hey, it works for tweens.
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