I’ve got one online “pal” (not a Doper) who I don’t particularly like. I just changed my IM setting so I will permanently be offline to this person.
I guess I’m feeling guilty because she’s battling cancer, etc., and is living with her parents, and doesn’t have much of a life. It’s all very sad.
But I just don’t like her, and really don’t have much in common with her, and have no particular interest in chatting with her.
Do I in some way “owe” it to be nice to someone I’ve never met IRL?
I don’t think you’re a bad person for not wanting to talk to her. You don’t have to like everyone you meet, whether it’s IRL or online.
Robin
I think if you were really a bad person you wouldn’t be asking, you just wouldn’t care.
And I don’t think cutting her out is mean. Sometimes you just don’t mesh with another, and you have no obligation to be anybody’s friend. Cancer or not. Look at it as giving her the opportunity to use the time she would’ve spent chatting with you, to meet someone more compatible. Hey, you’re doing her a favor!
No, you’re not a bad person, just human. I have blocked perfectly “nice” people from my IM because I just did not have the wherewithal to talk to them. IM is quite time-intensive IMO and I can’t blame you for not wanting to invest that much energy in someone you’ve never met.
Honestly, I do think it is a little rude to just disappear if you two have been talking often and regularly for a while. It is very upsetting when someone you consider a friend and are used to talking to disappears abruptly with no closure.
If you were never really that close to begin with, then maybe it’s okay. Certainly I have drifted away from people that I just didn’t feel I was clicking with.
You are not a bad person. You would be a very good person if you kept IM’ing with her but also a bit of a doormat. 
If she makes you unhappy, you would be doing yourself a disservice to continue as you were. You have no obligation to this person.
I am not a really a nice person, I can barely tolerate maintaining Real Life relations with a few relatives. I do so because they are family. If a friend gets to be too much, I pretty much cut them off. I’ve helped with two interventions for friends. One was an Alcoholic and the other a lazy bum who couldn’t get his life together. The friend that was an Alcoholic refused our help and he is out of my life. The friend that was lazy is now working hard and supporting himself.
Don’t feel guilty over the IM buddy.
Jim
“For a while,” yes – a couple of years, I guess – but “often,” no – two or three times a month.
Oh, yeah… just to clarify. I wouldn’t abruptly stop speaking to her- that would be mean. I’d perhaps slow it down, let her see you online from time to time and chat a bit, and just kind of gradually drift away. Either that or you could come right out and tell her- you should have some kind of feel of how she would react.
You’re fine, Twix. You get to set your own agenda. It says so here.
You’ve never even met this person, it’s not like you owe her anything. I don’t think blocking her makes you a bad person.
That doen’t make you bad, it means you are capable of making choices who to associate with, and are tough enough to act on them without being emotionally blackmailed into doing something you don’t feel good doing.
Just chiming in to agree with what others have said, if that helps.
Thanks, all. I do appreciate it. Still feeling a bit guilty – but I guess I’ll get over it.
No, I don’t think you’re a bad person. Actually, you’re reasonably nice, since you’ve been visiting online for a couple of years and now you need your decision not to talk validated by your friends here.
Can I print this out and laminate it and hand it out? Please?!?
You’ve been “talking” to her for a couple of years and only now figured out that you don’t like her?
Or did you used to like her, but then her personality changed and now you don’t?
I suppose I’m wondering if the cancer treatment is making her really crabby and so she’s not acting the same as she used to.
Obviously, you’re not obligated to do anything, but I think cutting someone off who’s getting treatment for a disease that may be making them crabby is really, really cold.
OTOH, if she’s always been a bitch, then have at her.
YMMV.
Hm, this doesn’t reflect well on me, does it?
I’ve never liked her particularly, but I’ve felt kind of “fine, whatever” when she starts a conversation with me (note that it’s never me starting a conversation with her). The other night she popped up, we were talking about something, she mentioned playing Scrabble, I said something about Stephen Fatsis’s book on competitive Scrabble players, she’d never heard of it, I looked it up on Amazon and sent her the link, and she read the review and then said she has no interest in reading it, because, as she’s mentioned all kinds of times, she doesn’t like to read.
And I thought, why the fuck am I talking to this person who doesn’t like to read?
Sure, but you might want to spell-check it first.
Just cutting her off is kinda mean. If it was you, you wouldn’t like it. It sounds like she’s got enough on her plate without wondering about you. If someone abrubtly disappears, you often fear the worst.
Just taper it off.
OTOH, Not a reader? BAH!
Well, here’s the thing.
Obviously, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. However, there are times in life when we do things we don’t want to just because they are kind, nice things to do.
So. You’ve got a sort of friend, who you’re not crazy about, but who doesn’t actually take a huge amount of your time. You’re not required to have long phone conversations, she doesn’t call you to drive her around all the time, and she doesn’t borrow your clothing and then give it back stained.
She has cancer. Her life is shit. She lives with her parents.
I suppose if it were me I would suck it up and continue to IM with this person a couple of times a month, because it really doesn’t cost you anything to do it, and you maybe the only outlet she’s got.
However, I’ve been called stupidly tenderhearted in the past, so there you go.
It just seems that if you’ve got so much going for you, you lose very little by being kind to someone who has nothing going for them, even if she doesn’t like to read.