Blogger Shyness

I'm sitting int he blogger's cafe surrounded by bloggers, some of them famous (the big W.R.) and I'm shy. Now I'm not really a shy person, but I have a hard time breaking in to a group of strangers. And yet many of them are not really strangers to me. And even the famous ones, are just people in real life. We all are right?

There is a kind of intellectual elitism among bloggers - that I perceive and that may or may not actually exist. The kind that I imagine that exists among any group of great writers. And I have to admit I want to be part of the group. I've admitted before my desire for fame, and I am half kidding about that, but I also have the desire to be among smart, thinking people; people who will challenge me, who know more than me, who will push me to learn something. But I not sure how to start those conversations face to face.

Is this the future of our social world? We know how to interact Online, but not in person? As much as we need to educate children on how to communicate in a virtual world, how to make good choices, how to weed through information with a critical eye; we also need to teach them how to do those same things in the real world. I sometimes feel as I go deeper into a virtual world I am forgetting those skills.