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MattholomewCup  ·  4067 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Decline of Friendship?

Since the age of 13 I've had friends who are purely online, living across the country. They've been as close to me as meatspace friends - in many ways closer. Often we started out as forum buddies, or gaming friends, but our interests drifted from those things - you can only hang out in online games for so long. But we remained friends beyond those things. Even when we had almost no common interests, we remained close, and even helped each other out through serious times in our lives - breakups, failures in school, depression, friends joining the military - we would get pissed at each other and work out our issues, we would talk about serious and not-serious things plenty, through IM or over voice primarily. I know for a fact that at least two of these friends had no accessible friends offline for periods of their lives and I suspect that we were mutually part of those <4 "close confidants" mentioned.

And then we all fell off the face of the earth to each other for the most part, and it's been about a year since I've spoken to any of them for more than 5 minute "hey what's up" (and one of them actively removed himself from being reachable).

All of my offline friends, from school for example, have in a big way become online friends since graduation, too. It's been hard to see each other for more than maybe an evening out if we're very lucky. What would people in the "only real friends are people you are with in real life" say to that? Is it that we knew each other in the flesh first that makes us "real" friends? Or does the fact that our relationships are contained almost wholly in cyberspace mean that we are precluded from being "real" friends? If I had met up away-from-keyboard with one of my online friends does that mean they graduate to "real"? Do I have to do it once? Twice? 10 times?

The point is, I think the line between what you might consider "real" and online friends is hazy. Friend groups offline break up all the time for various reasons, and while I concede it's a lot easier for online groups, I don't see why that inherently makes them any less real for the period in which they exist. You can still experience the same support, conversation, and stimulation from people even if they are hundreds of miles away - I know this from experience. A friendship can be whatever you make of it, no matter what the situation is.