Online friends
Dec. 14th, 2004 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraA question that came out of a discussion about on-line friends.
How many of your best friends are online only?
I value the entire online experience; it gets me thinking. It (often) makes me laugh,. I enjoy the kibitzing, and the ideas, that come from an environment in which both like minds and very unlike minds can meet, clash, and discuss. I value the sense of familiarity, the sense of community; you can certainly fit more people on a blog or an LJ board than you can in a room, and time becomes less critical in some ways -- if I'm suffering a bout of insomnia, the information is still there, and I can still respond to it, partaking in the discussion.
Discussions like these kept me sane when I first became a parent, because phone calls were impossible without interruption, and face it, baby screaming in your ear is not something you can ignore for more than about ten seconds, most of which are spent apologizing and getting off the phone.
But.
In a discussion with another online LJ denizen, something that struck me as odd came up: She said that many of her closest friends were people she'd never met or spoken to; that she couldn't actually put a voice to their online names or identities.
This made me pause. None of my best friends are online only. This doesn't mean that I don't value online friendships, but at some point, they cross the real world boundary in some less public way -- they almost have to.
Many of the friendships I value started in online venues (GEnie, for instance, but also in extended email interchanges), but developed over time with use of the phone and in-person meetings. I'm not entirely comfortable with the online-only version of friendship because what we present of ourselves -- both good and bad -- can often be so selective, we can't convey the whole picture. Nor can we derive the whole picture from another's selective information. We each come from different cultural contexts, and the way we use language -- to let off steam, for instance -- or the way we invoke privacy, are bound to be misunderstood by people who are completely reasonable, from their own cultural context. Or even just a different age; I cannot imagine what a conversation between my fifteen year old self and my forty year old self would be like, if it existed at all..
This may be some inherent flaw in the way I socialize. Or it could be my age.
So. Curious.
How many of your best friends are online only?
I value the entire online experience; it gets me thinking. It (often) makes me laugh,. I enjoy the kibitzing, and the ideas, that come from an environment in which both like minds and very unlike minds can meet, clash, and discuss. I value the sense of familiarity, the sense of community; you can certainly fit more people on a blog or an LJ board than you can in a room, and time becomes less critical in some ways -- if I'm suffering a bout of insomnia, the information is still there, and I can still respond to it, partaking in the discussion.
Discussions like these kept me sane when I first became a parent, because phone calls were impossible without interruption, and face it, baby screaming in your ear is not something you can ignore for more than about ten seconds, most of which are spent apologizing and getting off the phone.
But.
In a discussion with another online LJ denizen, something that struck me as odd came up: She said that many of her closest friends were people she'd never met or spoken to; that she couldn't actually put a voice to their online names or identities.
This made me pause. None of my best friends are online only. This doesn't mean that I don't value online friendships, but at some point, they cross the real world boundary in some less public way -- they almost have to.
Many of the friendships I value started in online venues (GEnie, for instance, but also in extended email interchanges), but developed over time with use of the phone and in-person meetings. I'm not entirely comfortable with the online-only version of friendship because what we present of ourselves -- both good and bad -- can often be so selective, we can't convey the whole picture. Nor can we derive the whole picture from another's selective information. We each come from different cultural contexts, and the way we use language -- to let off steam, for instance -- or the way we invoke privacy, are bound to be misunderstood by people who are completely reasonable, from their own cultural context. Or even just a different age; I cannot imagine what a conversation between my fifteen year old self and my forty year old self would be like, if it existed at all..
This may be some inherent flaw in the way I socialize. Or it could be my age.
So. Curious.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 06:32 pm (UTC)In college, I used the net to interact with friends from home, and it was faster than calling everyone to coordinate dinner and such on campus (this is just before cell phones exploded). So not really an issue -- though to this day my primary use of the net is to keep in touch with people I've spent lots of time with in person.
So, flash forward. A dear friend (and I am VERY sparing about that term) is totally against interacting with OL friends at all. No phone, no meeting, mail goes through a proxy. Originally this was understandable, because he was stalked a few years ago.
But now we've known each other over a year, and I've met/planned to meet/spoken on the phone with most of our shared acquaintance (including one of his RL friends, who is now my RL friend). Two attend or are applying to my alma mater. Four of our friends are getting married. He's flat-out refused to go to one wedding, and no way of telling what he'll say about the other pair (who are RL friends).
It's massively frustrating, mostly because anyone who brings it up gets told, "who needs to meet? who needs to call?" as if it's the most absurd idea ever, as opposed to the natural progression of close friendships. It would almost be understandable if he treated us like acquaintances consistently, but he doesn't: he stays up with friends in trouble or worried, etc.
Cognitive dissonance, man.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 03:18 pm (UTC)I can understand this; it's one of the possible hazards of online communication -- although perhaps because I've worked in retail for years, I've seen all kinds of behaviour that verges on occasion towards the truly creepy. The difference in retail is that everything is predicated on, well, either appearance or the captivity-to-customer-service that prevents people from telling someone to drop dead or get out automatically, when they might on any other occasion.
But now we've known each other over a year, and I've met/planned to meet/spoken on the phone with most of our shared acquaintance (including one of his RL friends, who is now my RL friend). Two attend or are applying to my alma mater. Four of our friends are getting married. He's flat-out refused to go to one wedding, and no way of telling what he'll say about the other pair (who are RL friends).
I can see how this would be massively frustrating. Just to make sure I understand this: he's the online friend, you've met or talked to some of his real life friends, but he's not willing to meet either you or some of your real life friends?
It's massively frustrating, mostly because anyone who brings it up gets told, "who needs to meet? who needs to call?" as if it's the most absurd idea ever, as opposed to the natural progression of close friendships. It would almost be understandable if he treated us like acquaintances consistently, but he doesn't: he stays up with friends in trouble or worried, etc.
Oddly enough, I can almost understand the latter as well. If he's had things turn out badly in the past, and he values strongly what he already has, then meeting = change and change = risk. He clearly values what he already has in terms of a relationship; he clearly sees it as valuable, in terms of being willing to invest the time to stay up (I assume this is IM?) with troubled friends. Possibly going beyond that, for him, means endangering it, in which case, the why bother? would make some sort of sense.
Having said all of this, it occurs to me that at my brother's wedding, several of his friends were online gaming friends of years longstanding -- people he'd met via Everquest. The primary interaction for a long time was, well, Everquest (and down time in Everquest), one of the few games my spouse has definitively asked me not to play.
I've never actually done online gaming; I play computer games, but usually either with my kids on the internal network, or alone.