Have you made friends online with people that you wouldn't have thought you'd be friends with? Have you kept up a friendship with someone far away because of the readiness of the internet?

Have you ever met an online friend? Were they what you thought they'd be?

Do you think that relationships that begin online are healthy and honest relationships, or do you feel that the anonymity of the internet makes people lie or stretch the truth about themselves?

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999

Answers

Yes, yes, and yes. Online friendships are a fairly big part of my life nowadays. Because I keep an online journal, people write to me fairly often, and I've gotten to know several of my readers very well. It also worked the other way for some of my relationships: I read something, wrote the author, and a correspondence began. I have met one reader in real life, and met another journaller last week. It's great to actually come face to face with the originators of the words I love.

As for the degree of healthiness- well, my journal is pretty honest and open, so people who meet me through it get a clear picture of what I'm about. If they lie to me, I'm not aware of it, but I'm not lying to them.

The big thing about on-line friendships is that they take as much cultivation and trust as off-line friendships.

It IS sad when journallers quit, especially when you want to know what happened and can't find out. I'm glad you're here, Pamie. You make me laugh out loud, and you do it with style. You're an original- and I wish you every continued success.

Love, Molly

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999

Well, I met my honey online, and here we are happy as hell after eight years together. I'm American and he's European, so Fate would have had a really hard time getting us together if not for the internet.

I've made a number of friends online, and eventually met most of them in person. In real life they're usually more or less the same as they were over the net... the trick lies in learning to accurately interpret their online behavior. You have to develop a good sense of someone's clinginess levels and all that. It doesn't always work, of course, and it can take a while to pick up the sorts of clues that you get a lot faster in person.

It's not all one-way, though. Sometimes the disparity between internet-persona and real life persona isn't a question of a person faking it on the net; sometimes their personality comes through beautifully in that medium, and it's face to face that they're too shy to reveal their thoughts and feelings. So in some ways, the "true them" shows better online than off.

But I don't think that you can make a blanket statement about the healthiness and honesty of online friendships. I've seen so many people get together through the net and have crappy relationships. They project their fantasies onto the other person and imagine he/she is all kinds of wonderful, without really knowing them at all. On the other hand, people have been doing that for a long time without the internet to blame for it :)

Humans, like all animals, use our physical senses to learn a lot about each other. So I do think a purely online relationship lacks most of what lets us trust and "know" each other at the most important levels. There's been a lot of hype about how great it is that gender, race, physical appearance, etc are irrelevant on the internet. While it's true (and really neat) that people do judge what you say more than how you look, it's also leaving out some real aspects of who you are. That kind of interaction isn't a substitute for visual/aural/physical contact. Maybe it's just a good means of introduction.

But sure, just on the level of friendly-friendships and not soul-baring intimacy, online friendships are great! Such an easy way to bring people into your life, without having to do all the footwork that offline friendships, even casual ones, usually require.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999

i must say that i feel like the eternal dork because i have online friends, but i also kind of wonder what i would do without them. My online friends are mostly also journalers, so there's not so much of a truth issue i don't think, but it's a tough call. And i just met one in real life for the first time last week and it was really fun, though bizarre to finally see someone talk that you think of as colored words on a screen.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999

Wow, Pamie, don't even get me started on this. For some reason, I attract a lot of online friends. I actually have a ton of friends in real life too, but online friends are different -- not withstanding the fact that they are ALL females and I'm just some random guy.

I use email to keep in touch with my dork-clique from high school. We kept in touch through college and now through work all by having a "calling circle" discussion on email. So, in that sense, it's been a blessing.

Now as far as online friends, I four good ones, and all of them, not too surprisingly, saw my website and wrote.

And now for a shameless plug, http://beam.to/schmeltzweb is my site. Most of my online friends wrote to me though my fan page for Emeril Lagasse (which is more of a tongue in cheek thing than a "fan page"). But one of those girls was the total opposite from me. I'm just some jewish liberal kid from the liberal northeast, and she lived in Texas (Round Rock) and was a born-again daughter of a preacher and was a conservative republican. But we ended up fantastic friends. Very open with each other and supportive, which was a nice thing to have. Right now she moved back to Puerto Rico, where she was from originally, so we don't keep in touch as much.

One girl living in California saw my website during my sophomore year, and wrote a note to me saying I was funny, but her total opposite (she's conservative too), and I wrote back, and it just took off from there. Again, we're totally open with what's going on in our lives (like, I'll help her with guy problems and all that), and I would say I feel as close to her as anyone.

Another girl sought me out on ICQ after seeing my Emeril Lagasse page, and we ended up good friends. That was about 2 months ago. And another one emailed me from the Emeril site as well and we write a whole lot.

But the funniest thing about this all is, I am more open with them than a lot of my other friends, maybe because I don't see them face to face so it feels more anonymous. But whatever it is, I've become very close with all of them, and it's been great.

I haven't met any of them face to face yet, although I'm always begging them to come up to DC sometime.

So, in closing, I love online friends, check out my website (http://beam.to/schmeltzweb), write to me on ICQ (#10720042), or email me. and if you live in DC, let's do happy hour. Maybe we'll have you there with us online or something, Pamie. :)

Eric

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999

Ok.

I realize the majority of us online are slightly odd. Perhaps you were the nerd, or the shy artistic type. I suppose this would be more true a year ago, as more people flood the 'Net, accessing from work and whatnot, but stick with me here.

Aside from that group, there are the newbies, the ones who have never been online before and hit the chat rooms and ICQ in a haze of disbelief that they could be talking to someone half a world away that they don't know - but seems to click right there, right then, just like a best friend.

Hmm.. where am I going with this?

When I first started with the computer thing in the early 80's, and got online to the BBS's and whatnot, I became 'friends' with a group of like-minded kids who all lived in the general area. We shared the same type of interests, we about the same age, and got together once in a while. The computer was really just an extension, not the relationship.

But nowadays, it seems as soon as you go online, there are people out there wanting to meet you. Stay on sixdegrees for longer than a few minutes and degreemails will come popping up with questions about the type of books you like to read to improper propositions. People form 'friendships' with people they don't even know, sharing intimate details about their life that they wouldn't have shared with a spoon after four tequila shots and a beer funnel, and a hash brownie.

They tell people things they wouldn't tell their wife or husband, their best friend in 'real life,' or their priest in a soundproof confessional. Because they are afforded some aspect on anonimity, and the surrealness of it all, that they can talk freely without the facial expressions, body language reactions, or instant judging you can sense when under someone's gaze.

People suddenly giving all this information about themselves and having a response of understanding flash back in ASCII text on their screen like an instant reaction gives an illusion of closeness. Of that other person having a vested interest in your droll little life. It gives you the illusion that you have a vested ineterest in the carbon life behind the silicon chips in front of you. Emotion without the complications of actual interaction..

without the nuances and unretractable quirks or missteps that real life has.. it gives a perfect setting to find perfect because it eliminates what throws a wrench in most of the gears of people interacting.

Namely, people interacting.

Now, I won't deny that people have met the loves of their lives over the 'Net and Web. But it all seems like one huge personal ad to me, then. Advertising yourself for other people through your vunerabilities and ability to appear sympathetic, funny, or coy over the wire... without even the inflection of your voice to betray you.

I find it too perfect that it is imperfect. Online friendships, I believe are mere aquantances that people don't understand, and extend the boundaries to without examining what they are doing because they are in the safety and

comfort of their home.

None of this precludes you meeting people in person from the online world and becoming friends that way. I just don't find that you can be friends simply through the wires of technology.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 1999

Met the online friend and he was everything I thought he'd be and more. We had our 3 year wedding anniv. back in Feb. God bless us Internet geeks. *grin*

-- Anonymous, May 07, 1999

I like to tell people that I met my husband online before it was "trendy". We started corresponding online, met face to face for the first time a couple of months later, and are now coming up on our seventh wedding anniversary this fall. (and the 12-year anniversary of when we first started corresponding is this month).

I doubt I ever would have met him if we hadn't met online. And it made the long-distance relationship much, much easier to deal with when I went away to college.

-- Anonymous, May 07, 1999

Katy: sounds familiar. It used to be so embarassing to tell people that we'd met over the internet. "What's the internet? You mean, like, you guys just wrote messages on a computer? And you didn't even know if he was cute or not? Ew! You are SUCH A NERD."

My husband and I even got written up in National Geographic a few years ago, as examples of this strange new online-relationship phenomenon. It was a silly article. They approached us as if we were specimens of some bizarre, alien tribe. Nowadays everyone I know seems to be meeting people online. It's a genuinely new development in human interaction. I do wonder how it will affect the world over time.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 1999

Great answers! I am in a similar situation as far as online friendships go. I met this wonderful guy only a state away 6 months ago in a chat room. After I broke up w/ my boyfriend in "real life" I made a list of qualities in my mind of what I wanted in a guy. Well "M" who I've been talking to fits the bill. He's been wanting to meet and I have been putting it off...for various reasons. I just have this feeling if we meet, things would take off quickly, we both are very emotional and dramatic, I could see us just dating for a short time then having him pop the question, honestly I could just see that happening. He isn't one to take things slowly, and considering we've been talking for six months now, we know pretty much everything about each other. So his thinking would be, "why wait"? I think that is why I'm hesitant to meet, not sure if I'm ready for a whirlwind romance right now that may end up with the m word....yikes. I also think it would be somewhat embarrasing telling people how we met....no one knows about him except my mother, and I could just picture other peoples reactions. They think I am weird enough, much less telling people I've met my match in a internet chat room. :) peace

-- Anonymous, May 15, 1999