Posts tagged youguys

A couple of weeks ago, I had an email conversation with a friend (::waves::) about the differences between in-real-life friends and on-line friends.  I guess I never really thought about it before, but in talking with her, I realized something.

To me, there is no difference.

I first went online sometime back around 1984 or 85, sitting behind my Coleco ADAM computer, using its 300 bps modem to visit bulletin boards (remember those?!) and to “work” on one of the first online gaming systems in the country — a multi-user text-based adventure that made my barely-teen geek heart sing every time I played it.

As hours turned into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, the friends I made on that game — almost all of whom I had never seen before — were some of the closest I would ever have.  Hell, one of them even ended-up giving me my first job in the tech sector, knowing I could do it because of our online time together and for no other reason. I’ve never forgotten that.

So, flash forward to today, and it seems like EVERYONE is making friends online, but it also seems most everyone has a distinction between “online friends” and “in real life friends,” somehow always inferring that the latter is better.

I submit that this is not the case.

Some of the people I have “met” online are also some of those people I would consider among my dearest friends.  I share my stories with them, seek their counsel, offer them comfort, and get more excited for their accomplishments than I do my own.

“How do you know people are telling the truth about who they are,” you ask?  Again, I submit that it doesn’t matter, or at least, not much.  Sometimes, online, we’re funnier, more handsome, or a better dancer than we are in our daily existence, but maybe…just maybe…that’s the person who we really are inside, but for whatever reason, we don’t let him or her out.  Our internal filters stop us from talking about sex, poop, or vomit issues in a board meeting or around the water cooler (usually), but on Twitter or Tumblr, we open-up and reveal that part of ourselves to the world that we NEVER would to an intimate group.

So, if I get to know that person online, I truly believe that I’m getting to know the REAL person on the inside, not the person that they’re forced to be on the outside.

I had the pleasure of meeting three on-line friends in real life recently, and let me tell you, they didn’t disappoint. After about three seconds of an uncomfortable silence, one of us broke the ice (not I, sadly) and we then didn’t shut-up for hours. At that moment, I knew that each one of those people I had been talking to in short 140 character bursts were exactly the people I had come to know.

Of course, many of you might find this strange.  Heck, there are a couple of you whom I’ve asked for advice and I trust implicitly, and I don’t even know your real names. I may not know you if I passed you in a hallway, but I know if I sent you an email with a subject of, “I really need your help,” you’d be there.  Some of you have talked me down from proverbial ledges and haven’t even known it. Maybe you don’t even really talk to me much, but I see something in you that I find fascinating, special, or just kind. Maybe you don’t even see it in yourself.

I guess part of this comes from who I am.  I’m married, have three great kids, a good job, and I’m a fiercely loyal person. I’m not on the Internet looking to cheat on my wife or scam people for sport; I’m looking to find the good people of the world with whom I click, regardless of their age, race, sex, or shoe size.  Really, I don’t even care if we ever meet face-to-face.  I don’t need to meet you to prove to myself that I like you. I can (and will) care as much about you though our short, haiku-like communications as I would if you were standing right beside me.

Because in my mind, you already are.