"Real" and "online" friendships

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I enjoy some of the comments from most of you as much as I enjoy the conversation with real (physical) friends. In fact, I think many of you are funnier etc.
Notwithstandings those who regularly attend faps / fagots etc, how do the rest of you feel about spending maybe 1-5 hours (i dunno - more / less?) here, in relation to a "real" social life?

I know there are way too many brackets, commas, disclaimers here, but I've been thinking about the process of making friends, and how well we feel we can know someone based on their web persona...
comments?

― paulhw (paulhw), Thursday, 22 July 2004 22:15 (twenty-one years ago)

"Online" friendships pretty much saved my (social) life in my teen years, living as I do on an isolated island where friendships are very hard to come by. I don't think that this hurt my chances of getting real life friends because really, online chatting only helped me develop my social skills, so I became less of an anti-social freak, and eventually did get more real life friendships.

One of the coolest things about online friendships is that they're by virtue of necessity based more on values, ideas, etc. than real life friendships, where shallowness always gets a chance to have a look in. This has a disturbing element, of course (you can lie about your life), but it really *did* feel great to have the whole burden of looks/social factors put away; many of the friends I have online I probably would never even have noticed IRL, nor they me.

Greatest thing evah: online friendships that turn into real life friendships. After communicating exclusively by writing (with the odd phone call thrown in) for a few years, you know each other so well that when you meet in real life you have an almost instinctive knowedlege of the other person's character.

(only drawback to this: you develop a network of friends around the world that you seldom get to see IRL, and can very easily fall out of touch with :( )

of course, all of this doesn't quite answer your question...I dunno, I suppose that if you're just talking about reading the boards, well, if you have 4 hours to spare, and you're sure you can't find anything more interesting to do, no reason to feel guilty, I'd say. If your ILX friendships extend to chat/e-mail/etc., well, read the paragraphs above (tho I must admit that the social circles I've frequented online have always been very small, and thus have never contained the sort of melodrama and nastyness that shows up on ILX every now and then, so my take might be a bit utopian.)

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, 22 July 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

hmm, yeah, thanks Daniel. I think I saw this kind of message board trhing as a fad at first, without realising how much I've come to value the kind of contact that it is (and following, how I found it a bit hard when ilx was down).

― paulhw (paulhw), Thursday, 22 July 2004 22:48 (twenty-one years ago)

how do the rest of you feel about spending maybe 1-5 hours (i dunno - more / less?) here, in relation to a "real" social life?

Same way pen friends felt in the 20th century, I guess.

― That's the Way (uh huh uh huh) I Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 22 July 2004 23:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I live WAAAAAY the fuck out in the middle of nowhere, and most most of my friends IRL are at least a two hour drive away, so this is nice.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 22 July 2004 23:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Adam OTM. I had loads of penfriends in high school - two of whom I went on to actually have a relationship with (not at the same time, pervos), some others who I met over the years, and many I never met in person (eg Beck T from the Mavis's). I had about 18 at one stage. I was constantly writing or reading letters, waiting for the postman... it was great!

Knowing people online is the new version of that, except, apart from the speed of replies, I do miss letter exchanges. I really loved getting and writing letters. It is a lost art.

Hmm that strayed somewhat off the subject sorry. Yeah, online friendships have a good and fun place.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 23 July 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

You need to research the archives for "Graham" and "real friends" ....good stuff. I think there's been several studies by now that have indicated that online friendships have their own way of developing emotional intimacy, and can be no less intense in regards to interaction than "physical" ones.

― Vic (Vic), Friday, 23 July 2004 01:01 (twenty-one years ago)

good lord, i hope not

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 23 July 2004 01:02 (twenty-one years ago)

My online friendships are pretty much all from another messageboard I've been visiting for four or five years (a teen site that most of us started going to in middle school), and basically since everyone changes so much between about 13 and 20 I think the friendships I've made there are more based on loyalty and respect and shared memories than a lot of my real life friendships. I'm actually not sure how I'd get along with meeting any of them in person, because we're very different, but I think it'd be more like welcoming distant relatives you haven't seen in years than normal friend stuff. The dynamic is definitely very different, but there are real people behind the e-mails or screennames and I don't think it's wasted time, although flesh and blood friends are important too.

― Maria (Maria), Friday, 23 July 2004 01:09 (twenty-one years ago)

If I hadn't had penfriends in the 80s, my life would have been a far poorer place. Some of those penfriends turned into IRL friends, in fact, I lived with one for several years.

Daniel pretty much OTM here:

Friendships IRL are sometimes based on convenience or familiarity rather than actual affinity. You get along with people in a small town because you have to, rather than actually having anything in common with them.

And also here:

Greatest thing evah: online friendships that turn into real life friendships.

This can and does happen. It makes me very upset when people dismiss ILX or others' reaction to it by saying "Calm down, it's just an internet message board!" Because it's *not* just an internet messageboard for some of us.

I have fewer and fewer pure IRL friends any more. If I have IRL friends, I tend to drag them onto the internet, because I want them to share something fun with me. If I get to know people online, I like to meet them IRL and hang out with them. The lines are all really blurred now.

― Ma$onic Boom (kate), Friday, 23 July 2004 06:49 (twenty-one years ago)

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