Online Friends Are Real Friends
toska.bearblog.dev
toska.bearblog.dev
The reality is, with no face and no resume in the way, all you've got is the actual person, what they laugh at and how they handle an idea they don't agree with. And in an MMO you see even more, how they solve problems, do quests, handle loot, and deal with moving through the game. That turned out to be the part that actually matters, and it's usually the last thing you learn about someone you met in person, not the first.
At some point we made the leap; she was in Tennessee and I was in California, so meeting in person was a very big deal. I flew out and drove deep into Tennessee, and we met for the first time in a Food City parking lot. It was amazing, we talked for hours.
As they say, "and the rest is history." We married and have been together for 20 years. Meeting her, and a whole crew of people I never met in person but still call friends, is the primary reason I joined the team trying to keep SWG alive [1]. We both still have fond memories of our time together in game, and now in real life.
So when someone tells me online friends aren't real friends, I just smile, because I married mine. And yes, I'm married to a gamer chick, and it's amazing! And all these years later, she's still my friend too. :)
Just those two aspects I believe are where online games have gone so wrong, and it's an easy fix. Persistent servers instead of matchmaking, and don't make every little interaction a gamified polished system. Leave some room for the chatbox/voice comms to be relevant for getting stuff done.
He's a lucky guy that has parents that understand him.
My parents didn't allow me to go. Years later I still hate them for it. I make sure they never know when I leave town now, since I'm not really in the mood to listen to my mom enumerating every way something bad can happen to me.
Let your fucking kid go. Especially when the kid isn't as retarded as you.
It was no fun realizing after a few IRL visits that we really just didn't like each other unless careful email communications was our primary means of interaction.
With some folks the time it takes to write an email is all the filter is needed. Sometimes, though, it only takes 5 minutes IRL to realize that you only like the persons email - not the person, themselves.
A great point that’s also true in reverse.
Pure online relationships where you have never met or seen the other person are in my experience an order of magnitude less "real". As you note, there's no 'skin in the game' and ghosting a relationship is zero effort and likely zero consequences, and when everyone knows this is the case the relationships are equally less consequential.
Also, since real life is abstracted online, small issues tend to become dramatic because. It takes courage, and some recklessness, to open yourself to a total stranger that might not even be what they claim to be. For us who saw the initial anonymous wild west of the Web, it's difficult to trust people online. It might be different with younger generations that grew up with having their real identity open in several mainstream places.
Sometimes people just go into different directions, it's sad but it's ok.
I've kept alive some online friendships from the bb forums, that I've met in real life a couple of times.
Similar to friends from HS, college or ex coworker friendships, sometimes interests change, they get into weird values you don't share or mature at a different speed than you. Sometimes it's just a logistics problem, it's hard to keep friends when you have a family, jobs and live in another time zone.
I've been ghosted by IRL friends as bad as with online friends. Outside of an awkward encounter in the mall or something like that, there is no real difference in that regard.
It is increasingly difficult to just "drop" someone when you friends with their IRL friends, which is also pretty common. You'll play a game and meet someone, they'll meet you and invite their friend to all queue up.
Sure but often the most easiest way to resolve nontrivial disputes online is to remove one of the participants from the community.
> It is increasingly difficult to just "drop" someone when you friends with their IRL friends, which is also pretty common. You'll play a game and meet someone, they'll meet you and invite their friend to all queue up.
Now you're bringing in real life relationships which yes are much harder to just drop.
The shift from playing together (childhood) to having each others' backs (adolescence, college, 20s) to building up each others' lives (adulthood).
Your true friends have bigger dreams for you than you have for yourself.
I like yours even more !
Are these really online friends if you are also recognizing them as real-life humans that exist in the same world you do and treat them like you would any other friend? Aside from maybe the Amish (and even that's questionable if you pay close enough attention to what they are hiding), there is almost nobody who doesn't communicate with friends using electronic devices. That is not a unique property.
"Online friend" only seems like a useful distinction if you truly think of them as a some kind of nebulous chat entity that comes to you via a connected device, where specific implementation details be it human, AI, space alien, or magical fairy doesn't play into the experience. Where if you eventually found out that it was actually ChatGPT on the other end you wouldn't be disappointed.
1. friend who you primarily communicate online
2. friend where initial contact was made online
Option 1 seems odd, especially for friends who have moved. Are they reclassified as "online friend"? Option 2 represents only a single moment in time and seems to have little bearing on everything past that initial contact.
Also some people seem to classify "real friend" as "friend that I physically see on a regular basis".
It has bearing indefinitely because it means you likely need to travel in order to interact offline.
Friends who've moved might or might not eventually demote to "online friend" status, in a similar way to how they might or might not demote to "used to be friends" status, I suppose.
1) School 2) Work 3) Very small town
If you live in a major metro area, it's pretty easy to not see people, especially if you're actively wanting to avoid them.
5. Having mutual friends.
6. Having common interests (playing in sports leagues, charity/volunteer work, active in local politics)
My best friends are friends I made due to my software hobby when I was a child. Hard to find such group concentrated in my proximity at the time.
I still continue to talk and meet with them every once in a while even though we are continents apart.
Yes, online people can disappear, but I have online friends whom I've been talking to for the past 12 years (basically all the way back to when i returned to the social internet).
It's really all about trust and time, like any other friendship.
This problem will only get worse with conversational AI agents/deepfakes/etc. For every human seeking genuine friendship there might be 100 AI agent scammers.
So your internet friends will delete you immediately in your moment of need? How reassuring.
You cannot "snap" someone without actually snapping a picture. You cannot for example generate some AI image or photoshop something and send it, as it will appear as an attachment, instead of a snap.
Still doesn't change the arithmetic.
> "In addition, there's generally a lower chance that the friendship develops out of convenience alone. Don't get me wrong, many in-person friendships are born this way and can turn into the most meaningful lifelong connections."
I don't have any "online friends" at the moment, but if I did, I'd have met them in the online equivalent of my city, but not at work and not next door, not in highschool. On the extreme end of convenience, you have precarious, proximity-oriented, passive, almost lazy social activity; you meet the friends at work, and you might invite them to drive out to your bbq in the burbs where you've also invited the people next door and across the lane. On the extreme other end you have friends that occur despite every communication and proximity challenge being thrown in your way. Great friends come from mutual investment despite some level of inconvenience you both can tolerate, and it's my opinion that if the seeds of the friendship are planted only in the shallow soil of easy access, then the plant won't bear much fruit, and may be ripped out of the ground as soon a layoff rolls around.
I don't online friends as meaningfully distinct from the requirements of any other robust type of friendship. They're just formed in the ephemeral online equivalent of a cosmopolitan city. I have strong friendships in different pockets pf the city for different reasons in different circles, and don't think they'd all work well together in the same room. Some I climb mountains with, some I watch movies with, some I play video games with.
Online acquaintances meanwhile, are formed in one discrete silo of interaction and don't stretch beyond it, much like your nextdoor neighbor or coworker.
Despite my best efforts to make it work, it's quite easy for me to see the contrast between people I've met from the internet and people who originated irl. The terminally-online people tend to have much higher rates of mental illness or be uncomfortably weird to be around. On the bright side, I've found this to be less true when socialising with people who I've met through those internet friends.
Additionally, internet friendships are more viable the less interesting and wholesome your life actually is. You can't start a band together. You can't share opinions on the taste of a meal unless it's from a multinational fast food chain. You can't walk through a forest together. You can't go on a bicycle ride on the trail near your house and share an equal level of genuine appreciation for how beautiful the nature looks this time of year, with full sensory experience. (Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH3D1cpm6do)
Sure, the internet could be a good tool to initially find people (if you're lucky enough to not experience the issues described my first two paragraphs), but for me the aim should be to transition to an in-person relationship as quickly as possible. I don't want my friendships to just be text on a screen, where every thought I express to them is monitored by the digital surveillance panopticon, where they could disappear and be replaced with ChatGPT and I wouldn't know the difference, where my friendship with them is on-hold if their house loses internet for a week and their cell phone reception isn't good enough to make video calls, where I can't give them a hug or offer to tidy their house with them or make any tangible, physical positive impact on their life.
I have acquaintances IRL, mostly from work. But my actual friends are people who I've never met face-to-face.
There have been people I’ve met online, then go to know and befriend offline. There are friends offline, who I’ve kept in touch with online. But there is nobody I know solely online that I would consider a friend, and it would take a lot to change that. IRL is simply a different thing altogether for me. It’s hard to imagine making a ‘real’ friend without try at IRL interaction.
I think something like Reddit would be unlikely to lead to this sort of thing, unless you're regularly participating in a small enough subreddit in a consistent/repetitive manner so as to recognize and be recognized by others (for example, I once helped run a little fanfic book club in a show's subreddit, and if that had gone on for longer, then I could see myself having gotten to know the other co-organizers a little better).
The key is probably to have some shared interest to bring you to the same place, but also an environment that's flexible enough to sometimes talk about things outside of the main interest. Older forums that would have an off-topic board were probably better about this than Reddit, since Reddit tends to segregate discussion about different topics into different places (with different people).
I've been running my server for about 6 years already, and it's a pretty strong community of around 20 or so people. Sometimes we get new people, not everyone is a perfect fit and they might stay for a few weeks before leaving. Some have left after a few years, some leave and come back; others come every so many months to chat for a day or two before going away.
There's many different types of relationships that can be formed in places like that.
I think what's most important is that there needs to be something you all share for it to work. Maybe it's anime, sports, whatever (in my particular case, it's an LGBT server).
I've already met around 5-6 people from this server IRL, and so far it's always been a great time.
I have no idea how people do it nowadays, gaming seems to have lost that social touch (at least to me).
Humans need other humans, in flesh and blood in front of them. Bonding needs a physical presence. That's the only way our social processes have evolved.
Given the sociability crisis and how having online friends can still have benefits, it's fine to paint them as something good, but they shouldn't be mistaken for the real thing, and this sort of ideas hide away our unnatural modern lifestyle.
There are also some people I've known IRL, who then saw my stuff on HN and reconnected with me IRL.
The former is neat, but the latter is even better.
the best online friends are the people I've known for 15 years, whom I just message two/three times a year for a deep conversation.
IRL friends have too much IRL mess of scheduling, meeting up, solving the issue that friend A really dislikes friend B now yet you need to fit them at one party.