Meatspace?

"The more people connect, date, befriend, network and socialize online, the more likely they are to eventually meet up in meatspace."

- from an interesting report on the links between online/offline worlds, unfortunately geared in its entirety to corporate marketing, but still intriguing for all that.

But meatspace? Have you heard this before? Admittedly when I first read it, I laughed, in my head. But upon further reflection, I'm not so sure. Is this supposed to be self-depreciating? Meatspace? Is this supposed to be some sort of pun?

It's just too ugly to be redeemable, though I like the concept behind it (which I am taking to be a tag on the inherent physicalness of real life, possibly with the added interest of the linguistic transition of different words for animals and meat, which I have recently read exists in almost every language - mirroring online vs offline spaces - but I may be giving these self-appointed trend-setters too much credit on that last one)

Nope - too ugly for me. What do you think?

**8/9/8 - well apparently I am out of the loop. According to Wikipedia (no - not source, obviously, but useful):

Some early uses of the term include a post to the Usenet newsgroup austin.public-net on Feb. 21, 1993^[2] and an article in the Seattle Times about John Perry Barlow on October 30, 1995 ^[3]. The term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2000 ^[4].

Well.