Internet friendship

Personal feelings on a certain matter.

I love it when people say: ‘Friends’ from online don’t count.

Because I know that they’re wrong.

There’s something really special about internet friendships.

I think, first off, theres an emotional connection that can be easily formed, because you can be so open on the internet because of that initial sense of anonymity of it all. You’re sharing your feelings you hide from your family because, hey, maybe they understand.

Not only that, but its so opposite from meeting a person, say, at school. You’ve likely never seen them, so if you’ve made any judgement of them, its on the contents of their blog or something along those lines. Your first judgments are on their interests or their personality.

Sure, there are drawbacks. You don’t get the facial clues, you don’t get to laugh at little quirks in their accent, but its just as valid in a completely different way.

It takes time to work up to even hearing a person’s voice. Everything you know of them prior to this point is (Unless they post pictures of themselves) their personality via what they’ve written. And I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Your first phone call, skype chat, or whatever, is like a brand new first meeting, but you’ve already got all this chemistry and friendship behind you. You start fitting the way you have thought of them in with how they look and sound and you’re getting an even fuller picture of them.

And by then, you’re so much closer. You add the intimacy of voices to the the thoughts and feelings you’ve already been sharing. And you KNOW them, even if you’ve never been within 100 miles of them.

For some people, people from the internet are their families.

These so called strangers are the ones who stayed up with you all night listening to you sob as you go through another nightmare or another night where it feels like there’s no one out there who understands you.

These so called strangers are the ones who believe and support you in your dreams, your goals, your aspirations when everyone in ‘real life’ told you that you should have crushed that dream before it even had a chance to grow.

These so called strangers talk with you, laugh with you, and have spur on private jokes at 5:30 AM in the morning just so you can get through another day of a family you may hate, classmates you may despise, and people you just can’t stand.

These so called strangers support you, listen to your problems, commission you, tell you that they love you, become your friends, your significant other, your family.

These so called strangers are now no longer strangers, but real people with voices, faces, dreams, and a presence that guides you through your life.

Internet friendship exists. It works. And it creates bonds that are as strong, if not stronger because these are not people you are judging by looks, by money, or by status. These people are people you’ve met because of their personalities, their fandoms, their likes, their interests, their standpoints, their viewpoints, and the talents that people in their ‘real lives’ never appreciated.

These are the people you’ve spent ‘til the crack of dawn, laughing about nothing and everything. These are the people you’ve confided and cried to because there was suddenly somebody who was willing to listen, willing to console, and willing to pick you up.

These are the people who saved and saved and saved all their money just so they can cross an entire street, an entire city, an entire state, an entire country, or an entire continent just so they could meet up with you in real life. These are the people who donated to you when you thought all hope was lost. These are the people who gave away every scrap they owned just so they could see their friend in a better situation.

These are the people, the so called ‘strangers’, the amazing people who are willing to do anything to ensure that you live to see another day.

Internet friendship is very much real. And while many might scoff and disregard an internet friendship as fake and unrealistic, many others know that it’s a very real thing that’s just as pure and good as any friendship you can forge in real life.