ElGuapo is by far one of my best friends. We've met twice now but originally hadn't met. Then spent 1 really drunk and drugged up night together. I definitely didn't formulate a true friendship with him the first time I met him IRL. But I can safely call him one of my best friends ever and absolutely love him. It all stemmed from a chatroom we were part of. That community was large (and even larger now) but the regulars all became exceptionally close. I know more about those people than I ever did my real life friends. I know their struggles and issues and desires and all sorts of things that you would never have the courage to reveal IRL. There is something about the internet that makes you spill everything. I remember one girl revealing a family secret to us before dealing with it IRL. I think chatrooms are the best format for this insane cross between anonymity and relationships. You say things over time and don't really think the same people are listening every time. You know it isn't saved somewhere for google to index or some bored person to find and read later along with your other comments. You say whatever and it's pretty much gone in about 5 minutes. As you hang out longer and longer you realize you know everything about these people. The first people I told that I was dropping out of school was the chat. The "mom" of the chat immediately got my ass on skype and made me talk about everything. It was talking about it to a room full people I barely knew that made me realize how unhappy I was in my current situation and flesh out my thoughts, feelings and desires before really choosing to deal with it IRL. I've met most of the regulars from the chat thanks to a glorious trip around the US on Jetblue's 30 day pass. But only for a day or two and usually with an excessive amount of alcohol in our systems. I don't think that those meetups changed or developed our relationships, we were already close friends before that. --- Zygar and I were actually also talking about online friendships and chatrooms last night and he mentioned that this is a bit of a disappearing as a trend as we move away from screennames and towards consistent identities (verified, twitter, facebook, etc.) When you know you are being watched or tracked you are less likely to reveal anything about yourself or have conversations about your innermost thoughts. He forsees a dystopian future where you can glance at somebody and instantly know all of their deepest darkest secrets..."casually anonymised and aggregated into a list of traits." I pointed out that will eliminate that amazing part of falling in love or developing a friendship where you don't know much about that person and are learning and talking more and more every day. That pure, unadulterated joy of not seeing their flaws or weaknesses and just loving every moment you get to talk or see them. We're definitely becoming close friends fast. The amount of random things that we talk about every day confuses and astounds me. --- I see the same relationships forming here on Hubski. I recognize names and associate them with things that they have shared and who they are. Threads about people's creative creations and photoessay posts really reveal a lot and make me feel like I know that person. Posts that come to mind are BLOB_CASTLE's dumpster diving and kleinbl00's Area 51 and AnSionnachRua's recent Mayo walk. I also get to live vicariously through these posts which I love and I think really strengthens how I feel about other users. I won't even talk about thenewgreen because I could go on for another 20 minutes. I've been here for a while now and I know what most of the regulars here do for a living, what their passions are, what they want most in life and what they aren't satisfied with, what generally interests them, and what they want to "be when they grow up" etc. That's saying a lot considering I don't know half that about some of my closest IRL friends.