As a girl who has written more than 600 pages in collaboration with a "stranger on the Internet she's never met," I tend to take great insult when people tell me that the co-writer to my blog isn't really my friend. Screw that. Excuse my purple prose here, but she is a gem of a human being that talks me through anxiety spells and that absolutely shines with positivity from the inside out.
And as a girl who has had a person she's never "really known" buy a plane ticket from California to Minnesota in the middle of winter so we could meet (and incidentally will do the same this year), I feel wronged. All the occasions this girl has taken time out of her already hellish engineering-student day to reply to my vents, all the care packages we've exchanged--heck, even the fact that she made a mixtape for my birthday (complete with original album art of a character I had created myself)-- yeah, it sounds meaningless. The fact that she can tell when my autistic self is going into sensory overload, something my own mother struggles with, is absolutely unimportant.
These people are not my friends. I don't really know them. They could still be a creepy 60-year-old man ready to pounce on me at any moment.
Because I meet creepy 60-year-old men where I met my two closest Internet friends: on a virtual cat-raising sim where you get booted if you swear more than twice. Forget Facebook, say the perverts. Let's go prey on weird kids who spend their free time raising pretty pixel kitties!
The point is that I still can't understand--and it's usually older folks that tell me this--how people believe that Internet friends aren't real. That the person who had her phone in her pocket all day for moral support when I was going on my first date or the person to whom I first came out, isn't somebody I should turn to when I'm hurting.
I think it comes from a lot of people not really knowing how these tight Internet friendships work. It's a new thing and, I get it, change is scary. We get stuck in that mindset that was instilled into us as kids: never trust anyone you talk to online. And of course there's a ton of sense in this! When I first met my buddies, I didn't go around spilling my address or real name or anything--to do that to somebody you've known for a few weeks isn't smart...even in person!
However, once you chat--through text messages or otherwise--with somebody for months, it's just like being friends in real life. And all the crucial elements of being a physical friend remain of utmost importance! I can say that because my Internet buddies and I all do the following: we
1. Communicate:
We tell each other if we're upset by something they did or said. If somebody is going to be gone for a while because of outside commitments, they inform everyone so that nobody panics.
2. Support:
If somebody needs to blow up the other's inbox with a vent the length of Homer's "The Odyssey," you bet that the other is there to advise and console.
3. Do things together:
We talk about our schoolwork and watch shows while on a video call.
4. Encourage:
My Internet friends and I tell each other how awesome the other one is--sometimes every day! It's so great! Imagine how amazing it would be if our real-life friends did that, too.
The way we interact with our fellow man is changing--ask any communications scholar or even your local journalism major (yours truly). Mediated methods of communication like the Internet are creating new methods to get jobs, new ways to consume news--even new ways to seek romantic relationships.
Why is it impossible that it's creating new and valid ways to make friends, too?