Don’t ever talk to strangers on the internet.
It’s the golden rule of computer usage, lectured into the brain by our parents every time you log on. You never know who’s waiting for you out there. Stories float around all the time - of the hapless girl who was conned into losing thousands because of someone they thought they’d had a connection with, of the virtual soulmate that, in reality, is nothing like their profile picture. The list abounds on and on, and you drink them all in to the point where if a stranger even tries to say hi on the internet, you backtrack faster than Usain Bolt during his gold medal race.
But naturally, once you get older, you begin to question that wisdom. You start out with our innocent internet profiles, skulking around without making ourselves known. Everyone seems so nice on the internet, it seems. How can they all be out to get us? Surely there have to be people like us - people looking to talk about the things you like because, for whatever reason, you can't find someone in real life to talk about it with.
It happens in swaths of subject matter: perhaps you love Supernatural and could talk about it for months on end, but our friends have long since grown tired of our babbling and moved on. Or, in a stroke of luck, you’ve found this little known series you love but know no one else that wants to talk about it, let alone put in the effort of watching. Or maybe you just like comics and find it easier to communicate in front of a screen rather than make awkward small talk. (That's what conventions are for.)
Regardless, once the proverbial toe is dipped into the lake known as the internet, there's no going back. Finding people (or users, really) you can talk with until the cows come home is easy, especially if the thing you love is popular on the internet. You can spend every day interacting with someone new and come away with your life being the exact same as before you became part of the internet’s world. Casual company, nothing more. After all, you don’t really know these people; even though they claim to enjoy the same things as you, the off chance that they’re sleazy old men cackling behind keyboards is still niggling in the back of your head. You don’t press forward, they don’t press forward.
The ones that stay, though - the ones that, despite the sheer volume of fans, you encounter day after day, rehashing old and new topics - they’re worth throwing caution to the wind for. They’re worth your time and near carpal tunnel.
Internet friends can be something else entirely, but only if you let them.
Internet friends are just like the internet itself - there’s so many things to learn about them, they know so much, and they can’t judge you based on you - because, after all, they’ve yet to have met you. They can come in many forms, all of them comforting and beneficial. Some of them can even change you for the better.
There’s your first internet friend, whom which you throw up all of your walls in the beginning. Slowly, you open up to them, sharing piece by piece of information until it seems like they’re completely entwined in your life , and you theirs. You know the names of their friends, how they do certain things where they live (and if you come from different areas, have a grand old time arguing about pronunciations and names), and the things they’re proud to defend with their lives. You write letters and exchange messages at ungodly hours of the morning, each of you refusing to be the first one to go to bed even though the time difference means the other really should be already asleep.
It’s like the first love of your life: you never really forget your first internet friend, because they teach you all that there is to know. With them, everything’s shiny and new and covered in long conversations involving tons of “LOL” and “what if this, this, and this happened”. It’s exhilarating and the good kind of exhausting at the same time. You learn how to provide in an emotional situation and the relief involved in being able to break down to someone you don’t know; someone who only knows what you tell them and can’t judge based on anything else. You never forget the things they teach you: that the way you live is not the same around the world, that there’s so much of it to see beyond the borders of your little town. They expand your worldview, they make you think. They change you. They teach you how to read message tones, understand your sarcasm, and reply to your sincerity with equal gravity.
You learn, and you know.
Your first internet friend is made so easily that it sends you tumbling into a frenzy, eager to make more. It’s going to be just as easy as the first, you figure. You reach out to everyone, leaving positive comment after comment and interact with a newfound confidence you’re not really sure you had before. Information tumbles more easily than it had before - social media handles, bundled messages of love and support - easily given to those who want to take all they can. And it takes some time, but you make new friends. They come in all different shapes in sizes, learning about you to different capacities. None of them really know you like that first internet friend does - after all, how can they, when they’re not the person that’s known you the longest in that way - but they have the ability to come pretty damn close.
On the outside, there are the ones who know you on the surface. They’re regulars in your interactions, and in shoutouts, their social media handles pop up in your mind quite quickly. But you never get any further than simply trading comments back and forth about a common subject you both enjoy. They do not get a glimpse into your personal life, nor you into theirs. The exact reasons why are unknown, but you are content with letting them remain on the fringe as they are.
Further in, there are the ones privy to parts of your personal life - perhaps the ones that know that you have three siblings, what you want to do when you grow up, or your favorite book. They stand to get to know the parts of yourself you have put out for the world to see, the parts that aren’t ugly to look at and that you’re convinced that, if aired, would send everyone you’d ever said a word to (virtually or in real life) running for the hills. You make no allusion to these parts of your life, concealing yourself when they get to be too much for you to put on a facade and march on like nothing is wrong. And when your facade does crack the slightest, and you air your grievances in vague postings that only sound like they’re calling someone out, it doesn’t occur to them to stop and help you, simply because they are not close enough to you to effectively do so.
There are the ones that have committed themselves to being your friend, no matter how much of a part or full-time job you deem it to be. They smile and affirm you at every turn, whether you ask for it or not, simply because they think you deserve all of the praise and happiness that’s going on in your life at the moment. They are the ones that don’t mind your texts in the odd hours of the morning (in which your time zones line up, thank you very much), reassuring you that everything’s going to be alright and that you are indeed worth a human life. It doesn’t take them very long to make their way into your inner circle, the one you’ve carved out for your real friends and the one virtual one from all those years ago.
In return, you are you for them. You are what they have so unselfishly given to you without asking of anything in return - a confidante, a support beam, a sounding wall if need be. You chip away at their walls with what strength you can, wanting them to see what they’ve helped you see - that they deserve praise, happiness , and that no matter how bleak the situation may seem, it will all resolve itself in the end. And their happiness is not a full-time, a part-time, or even an occasional job to work at. Friendship is not a burden, regardless of what they say. They have grounded you, reminded you that there is a reason you are to exist. You will fight tooth and nail for them, even if it is against themselves; convincing them that they are beautiful because you’ve seen the pictures and they are, all wide-smiles-and-shy-beautiful-determined expression beautiful, the kind that’s mastered facial expressions and whose tone you’ve somehow already heard in your head despite not having actually heard their voice.
Lastly, there’s the surprise friend, the one that seems to worm its way into your deepest circles without you even noticing. You’re not really sure when they became such an important, integral part of your life, because one minute they’re on the outer layers of your friendship spheres...all it takes is one well-placed comment, one piece of knowledge about that one thing you absolutely love- and just like that, they’re in. What used to be simple, formal messages transform into incoherent all caps shouting that would make absolutely no sense to the average outsider, but somehow, it makes all the sense in the world.
What surprises you about them is how there they are, how they always seem to be ready to reply to you no matter the time of day, and how easily you get used to seeing something from them every time you open up social media. It’s embarrassingly quick and easy how they become the only person to have seen you at all hours of your functioning, from wide awake and alert in the middle of the day to terrifyingly groggy at the crack of dawn. You think that it only lets them in to you more, only strengthens the nearly Pavlovian response you have when you get a notification.
(The strength of your response borders on sad, really, but the small messages you read - and the consequent smile that lights up your face - is worth all of the embarrassing signs you might be displaying.)
You’re surprised at how hard it is to live without them, without that constant little ding that signifies a message. How much time has passed since you’ve met them, you’re not really sure, because all you can remember is every waking hour tinged with their presence. You even tried to be without them once; some internal voice had screamed at you not to rely something you couldn’t actually have, and the result had been an empty, anxious cavity in your chest , the knowledge of your non-response weighting on your emotions like nothing had ever before. The feeling surprises you, and you’re sure of one thing: that you never want to feel it again.
Perhaps what surprises you the most is how at home you feel, how they become your cocoon during the space-like hours of one in the morning, when your room is just a little too big for one person and you’re feeling just a little too inconsequential to the world. How easily they weave themselves into the quiet moments of sunset, springs and soft songs set to the city originally meant just for you. It’s a little scary, really, how images and visions you had once only imagined yourself in stretch easily to accommodate them, and for a minute, you fight it (after all, it’s what you’ve been dreaming of for years) but eventually lose to tempting possibility. For once, you are not alone, and it is because of them that you’ve come to this surprising state of existence.
Granted, the internet is still plenty dangerous. More now than ever, predators skulk the web, looking for their next victim naive enough to fall into their trap. It’s good reason to follow the golden rule of the internet: if you don’t know them, don’t talk to them at all. But you are a master of logic and self-control. Today’s social media circle has made it easier than ever to hide yourself behind a fake identity. Use that to your advantage, and perhaps put yourself out there. After all, you never know who’s waiting for you out there.