When having a conversation through an online service, you may encounter a scenario like this:
(Messenger chat)
- Me: Hello Stranger!
- Stranger: Hello!
- Me: What do you think of Barack Obama?
- Stranger: He's a good friend! We play tennis together!
- Me: Oh? You meet him in real life?
Whenever I say "real life" or "in reality" during this kind of online conversations, I hesitate and have this horrible itch where I tell myself "gosh, this doesn't make sense at all, how is this NOT real life?"
Is there a better term to use in this kind of situation?
I don't want to say "in reality" because, well, even an online chat is reality…well, even if you disagree with that, is there an alternative anyway?
Best Answer
At the computer magazine where I work, we have a somewhat similar problem in identifying physical stores that customers can walk into, purchase physical items from, and leave again carrying the items, as opposed to online stores where transactions occur digitally. Our standard way of distinguishing between them to is to call the physical stores "brick-and-mortar stores." I wouldn't suggest saying "I've met him in the brick-and-mortar world," but you might try "I've met him in the flesh" or "I've met him in person at [name of specific location here]."
When you think about it, this situation isn't all that different from the problem of distinguishing between someone whom you know through direct physical meeting in the material world and someone whom you know strictly through pen-and-paper correspondence.