I don't see a best friendship as requiring a physical tag as such.
My best friend is someone I've known for twenty years, went through high school together, play bad golf regularly, same taste in films and we both enjoy watching sport from the comfort of a lounge room, yet he simply doesn't understand why I like to read books.
It's not an issue for him or me, however reading a book and occasionally finding that one special book is one of the loves of my life. Reading however is an incredibly solo type event and the time invested is often measured in weeks which tends to limit your social interaction somewhat. You can't get a group of friends together to go read a book and not just because their interpretation on how a character's name should be pronounced is going to be different.
My introduction to the internet was because I wanted to talk about the books that meant so much to me and bitch about the ones that pissed me off; and I found those friends. Some I've now met and some I haven't but I'm not sure the meeting has changed any perceptions I'd previously had. This might be because books are such an internal thing (well for me anyway) that it would be hard to not get a rounded picture of an individual and I find email relatively expressive of a personality.
When I read a good book, the online people are who I turn to; does that not make them a best friend? Sometimes it's nice to get more, other times just having a 'moment' is all that matters.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 12:23 pm (UTC)My best friend is someone I've known for twenty years, went through high school together, play bad golf regularly, same taste in films and we both enjoy watching sport from the comfort of a lounge room, yet he simply doesn't understand why I like to read books.
It's not an issue for him or me, however reading a book and occasionally finding that one special book is one of the loves of my life. Reading however is an incredibly solo type event and the time invested is often measured in weeks which tends to limit your social interaction somewhat. You can't get a group of friends together to go read a book and not just because their interpretation on how a character's name should be pronounced is going to be different.
My introduction to the internet was because I wanted to talk about the books that meant so much to me and bitch about the ones that pissed me off; and I found those friends. Some I've now met and some I haven't but I'm not sure the meeting has changed any perceptions I'd previously had. This might be because books are such an internal thing (well for me anyway) that it would be hard to not get a rounded picture of an individual and I find email relatively expressive of a personality.
When I read a good book, the online people are who I turn to; does that not make them a best friend? Sometimes it's nice to get more, other times just having a 'moment' is all that matters.