May 25, 2012
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The Indescribable Complexity of Internet Friendship
I have always thought for most of my adult life that I am pretty good at making friends. I tend to keep the same friends for years. I tend to make wise choices about who I trust.
I must admit that I am not sure I have ever been able to get a handle on Internet friendships. By Internet friendships I mean friendships that I make where I know the person only on the Internet.
I tend to misjudge the friendship. For example, on xanga I am always surprised when I read a relationship as friendship and then I happen by a post written about me by someone who acted like a friend. In other words, I am not sure I can read friendship and loyalty on the Internet like I can in real life. Maybe there are just an inordinate amount of dysfunctional people on the Internet.
I remember being friends with a guy on xanga. He told me he was more open with me than he was with anyone in his real life. Then one day someone forwarded a screenshot of a comment he made about me. I remember just being shocked by the statement. I guess it was naive. But I tended to trust the person. We used to IM almost every night. (I know this sounds like a gay relationship in retrospect).
(Here is a photo to make up for the last gay sounding paragraph).
I was friends with a lady and we talked all the time. We were good friends and I enjoyed the time we spent talking. But then one day, she went sort of crazy. She acted like I betrayed her trust by not talking to her for awhile when I was busy at work. At no time did I feel different about our friendship. I just got busy.
I think my approach in real life has been “friends for life” and I am not sure that approach works on the Internet when someone can shut down and remove everyone from their Internet life instantly.
It appears on the Internet that it is too easy to misunderstand a friendship. You are never really sure whether the other person is rolling their eyes at you or if they have a smile on their face when your message pops up. You can’t read their body language. You can’t tell if you are making them mad when you are unaware that they really do care who becomes the next president.
I appreciate the friends I have made on the Internet but I also wonder if I am cut out for the short term mentality of Internet friendships.
Comments (63)
Wow I can’t believe you’re still doing Xanga posts! It’s been years!
This is a good and well thought out post on a very relevant subject. I applaud you.
If you ignore a friend in real life they can come over and Kick Your Ass!
I think it really depends on the person. I have a friend who I’ve been friends with for 11 years online. We text now, but yeah…I dunno, I like internet friendships.
idk some internet friends are shallow and temporary and not really friends, but I guess I do have the capacity to love some of my internet friends and consider them “for life” friends, or at least i hope they are.
i tend to read it by frequency and contact of contact, if i’m continuing to try to communicate with them via chat, comments, emails or whatever and they are not responding or initiating, well, it could be that they are busy, but if i see them commenting on other sites i read or read/hear about the chats, etc they are having with other people the whole “oh im just busy” excuse doesn’t fly quite as well and i imagine them rolling their eyes more often than not.
when it comes down to it though at the very core they are no different that RL relationships, they still require both people involved to be open and honest in order to succeed; it’s just a bit harder for one to read if the other is or not.
I’ve never made a “friend” on the internet and wouldn’t want to. Commenting back and forth with people is nice and that’s where I leave it. I grew up as a teen on the internet where it was stupid and unsafe to talk to stranger adults on Xanga, and that’s the mentality I’ve stuck with especially after a former friend of mine ran away with a pedophile when we were both 15.
And your comment about the relationship sounding gay in retrospect literally made me laugh out loud ahahah. Well done.
I DIDN’T GO CRAZY I JUST GOT REALLY SCARED BECAUSE IT WAS 5 MINUTES SINCE YOU RESPONDED. I sent you a dead maggot infested cat to make up for it, you didn’t have to post about it.
Spill it – who broke your heart on Xanga today? I know your style well enough to know when a post is specifically about one person.
Something similar can be said about friendships that were great in person, but then had to transfer over to being maintained through technology due to long distance. After years of not seeing each other in person, or rarely if at all, it gets tough when things that were once important between the two people start to decline because one of them doesn’t put as much importance into it since it is only able to be maintained through technology and it gets hard to connect on a deeper level, no matter how many deep convos you have or no matter how close you are and/or were.
I don’t even know what I just said or was trying to say lol but I have a complete scenario in my head and it’s playing in my brain as I type this so it totally makes sense to me.
for me, i m kind of have more trust on ppl i met from internet. I definitely have a opened mind to chat with them.
Maybe i dont think i will make them to be a real friend in life.( hang out, shopping, dine together)
i feel kind of easy to talk to them.
Internet friendship is a sped up version of real life friendship. Everything happens much faster because there is that tiny bit of disconnect that makes things easier to do. We can trust each other a lot faster when there is no real consequence in terms of rejection and hurt. If they don’t like you, just delete them off your friends list. It’s a lot harder to get rid of someone in real life.
For me personally, internet friendship is great. I’ve met some really great people online that I wish I could have around me in person. The problem I have is that I’ve gone and screwed up every internet friendship turned real life friendship. I don’t think any of them have ended well.
I have some people I consider my friends on here, we’re friends on facebook and everything – and I’d like to meet them
the only thing is I’m afraid if we met each other in real life they’d be like “ew, that’s what she’s like?” and not like me anymore hahaha
I think that’s one of the reasons that it’s easier for some people to make friends via the internet. It takes less effort. There’s no awkward face-to-face silences. It’s easier to gossip without getting caught. =/ And the sad thing is that people can and do just up and “leave” an internet friendship. I think it boils down to a matter of “convenience” for a lot of people. =/ Sorry to hear that.
Reading people is sharpened by internet friends in my opinion.
Makes sense.
The problem with internet friendships is we design them how we see them and WANT them to be.We design what we think is the perfect friend and then we either meet them in person and they aren’t that person we designed or one day they show they aren’t the person WE made them out to be in our head.I’m sure there are some really cool and nice folks here just like I hope people think I’m nice(notice I left cool out)
I’m just here now to laugh and maybe get a laugh back out of someone.I have no desire to meet anyone in person from Xanga anymore.I’ll keep internet friendship at a distance.
You made some great points. Internet friendships can be great, but just like friendships in real life, sometimes they just don’t work out in the end.
I’ve made plenty of Internet friends over the years, and I really like it. Sometimes it’s nice to just connect with someone and chat online rather than have to make plans and be face-to-face. And like Lithium98 said, if things don’t work out you can just delete them or they can delete you. Though there are a few people on here I’d love to meet in real life, that can always be a little odd because people are often different than they present themselves to be online.
I saw that. don’t hate me.
oh snap. heh.
I want to be friends with the girl in the picture.
I don’t think I’ve ever made a real friend on the Internet. I don’t know if I’ve ever tried to. It’s hard to see someone’s character in cyberspace.
Maybe it’s not the internet, maybe it’s Xanga
ah! internet friendships. They can be hard. I mean unless you spend great amounts of time talking with them.
I’ve made some good internet friends. Some I wish were closer so we could actually hang out. So far I’ve only encountered one truly scary nutcase; most folks are just real nice…but then, Im cautious. I’m not into drama and not looking for “relationship”, just conversation and sharing.
Some people really fake who they are online. The crazy ones can keep it up for a long, long time. When they get bored of it or feel like moving on, I think they wig out. I’ve seen it happen so many times. You’re lucky if they just wig out online and it hasn’t progressed to a real life situation and then the person wigs out!
Good save with the bikini chick, Dan. It was getting a little weird there for a hot minute.
Frienship online is real, regardless of it’s duration. Everything passes anyway. Online interaction is very strong since the mind works harder to compensate for the missing physical presence of the other. I personnally think that online communication is an evolving, perhaps spiritual binding force among people. It also gives the chance to ordinary people to talk at last for once in our lives. I think we are living something extraordinary because of the computers. I blew my top. ty
Xanga, like in real life, is full of dishonest people, because it is human nature to lie. The people we know in real life are not our friends, just people who are willing to listen. Our children are a burden. I’m not sure my answer is accurate. Nor do I know why I am posting here.
To spicen things up, I just want to say you are xanga’ s premadonna, and, your comments carry more emotional value than most. I only wonder why there is only one TheoDan. Should’t it be a Trinity? Lol, alrighty big boy.
P.s. Tell Shimmers she needs to chill out, she vents so much on xanga, makes me think in real life she is miserable or something. I noticed Mr. Gravy sent you a comment, that was real sweet of him. We are not friends, but I know the trend of Dan worship. Anyways, I don’t troll as much as I used to. I still don’t know what xanga is, only that a lot of comments are dumb, but I really do like your comments. Does that mean I like you?
This is really strange timing…. my only friend is on the internet and I seem to have ruined our friendship recently.
I’m sorry you’ve been hurt by friendships on here, Dan!
There’s the added problem that, while communication is vitally important to maintaining any sort of relationship well, it’s hard enough face-to-face—when you have the lack of communication venues on the internet, one (no body language, facial cues, vocal cues, etc.), and then the depersonalization of having an avatar/vector through which to speak, two (which encourages people to say & act things they never would, because it doesn’t quite touch them) —you get into some tricky waters. Especially when blogging is such a specific activity, engaged in (at least for many people) during certain frames of mind, it might not always add up to a full narrative. You’re left guessing at the gaps in a way that you don’t do in person, perhaps in part because you’d never get that full a picture if you weren’t allowed a strange, virtual window into their mind.
To compound that, you have never-beforeseen, near-unbridled access to the mass of the people in the world. No wonder we seem to encounter more crazies; it’s statistically necessary!
That being said, I’ve made some dear friends via the internet that totally panned out in real life (probably in part because of that “virtual window”) and some which I’ve never met, but whom I love dearly anyway; for example, I know a couple who met on xanga and are now married—and I designed their wedding invitations, but never personally met them (which yes, is a shame).
So don’t give up entirely.
“Maybe there are just an inordinate amount of dysfunctional people on the Internet.”
There are dysfunctional people all over the place in real life too, you just happen to be able to see their inner thoughts on a blogging site like this.
Those things both sound like things that also happen in real-life friendships. It’s just harder to find out about it when your friend talks behind your back because screenshots are easier to take than audio recordings.
I look at friendships in my life different from friendships on the internet. I still value them but I understand that they are just “internet” friendships. If we were to meet in real life then I would consider them a friend in my life and only on the net.
I so respect people who make friends for life. I still think that is rare in real life and on line it may not exist at all
My impression is that the internet has a sub-population of very needy people, and a certain subset of those are certifiably psycho. I’ve become somewhat wary of the use of “friend” when related to people met on the net. I absolutely do have internet friends, but the friendships have developed over the better part of a decade, not months.
In the late 90′s I thought internet friendships were practically the next stage in human evolution, but that has since faded a bit and jaded a lot. The identical frailties in human contact exist both in real life and the net; it just takes longer for them to surface on the net because of the lag time in communication.
not a huge fan of internet relationships. people are more “open” and/or more likely to “lie” on the net because they’re behind a computer screen. in past experiences most internet relationships fall to tatters because either a. their true colors show or b. there are miscommunications that aren’t really worth your emotions or time.
real life relationships are more fulfilling and meaningful to me. there are VERY rare exceptions, but the vast majority i don’t really care for. give your 2 cents and move on.
Good post, Dan. I didn’t know you were that sensitive (I don’t mean that condescendingly)– you are very perceptive and really nailed at the issues with online relationships. For whatever it’s worth, I luv you forever and ever, even if you delete my third comments and the ones I make at Curtis (:
after facebook’s blow-up (it’s destined to decline now) i return to xanga to read a few and of course see your posts. Excellent work, as usual. The rules of online ‘friends’ have never changed no matter the medium. People have their online anon. persona, and one that is real-life. The online one will usually show less, exaggerate more, be less ‘honest’ than the real-life.
I think you are right about this and I feel like you are a good solid person but you could just disappear overnight,too.
I try to be honest in my comments and post and there are people I like better then others but I dont’ know sometimes….
All my valuable internet relationships sprout from playing Counterstrike 1.6 and we actually had to speak to each other rather than just chatting (while we did a lot of that too). Hardcore gaming all day/night means I’m spending most of my time constantly talking with the same people, my clan. And as other games came out, we committed to play together. Spending THAT much time with people for years obviously leads to conversation beyond game strategy. It leads to first name basis, confiding in each other about real life problems, chit chatting about random things, being Facebook friends, and deciding to all meet up.
I think hearing each other’s voices can affect a lot. Also, bearing witness to how they interact to their real life friends, like FB or the same medium. On xanga,if we stay within just chat and reading blogs, it’s easier to formulate a personal image of someone or be lied to.
Internet friendship is hard. When the relationship is only online, it is easy to misunderstand what people write and mean. I have had a couple internet friendships that have remained low maintenance, chat when we can friendships and I have met internet people where we became friends in real life, as well. These are my favorite kinds of friends because then I can place real facial expressions to their words and real laughter to their LOLs. Even if we remain only friends online and see each other every couple of years it is reassuring to put real faces with messages. I am sure internet only friends are real friendships as well, but for me its better when I can place a face with them.
It’s harder to filter out the crazy in the virtual world. I wouldn’t say online sorts of friendships are really just short term at all, everything really just depends on the people.
wow…a “real” post by you! I am always surprised. I think on the internet we are more likely to find out about things like others backstabbing us, but people are also less loyal because it’s easy to drop someone and replace them with someone new as there are plenty of people around.
I tend to think I make good choices in rl, but online I don’t really get close to people easily.I made the expirience that some people try to get close very soon but then also drop you soon, so I am careful with people like that, that’s all I can say. I don’t really like the short-term mentality either.
Well I spose you find people that backstab you in real life too.
Internet relationships, be it monogamous or non-monogamous, will never be the same friend forming experience as a personal relationship. I too have come to see this. There’s just a huge disconnect, which causes random things to happen. Every now and again you might make a friend that’s got a “friend for life” quality, and maybe they will be. But it can never be the same as actually connecting with people in person, shaking their hand, making eye contact, body language, you know, the little idiosyncrasies.
I find Xanga or the internet primarily for self-fish pursuits, so therefore a lot of times friendships die or fade away easily. I’m pretty guided by them really, I probably share some of the most information, but friendship is more than sharing intimate details in your life. It’s also about spending time with one another, taking time out of your week for “IMing” the person. I think the really bad thing about internet friendships is the long distance really. The lack of social cues etc.
I had a friend on Xanga, who I befriended on fb. I made a comment on here (Xanga) that she took in the wrong way, so she sent me a msg on fb and deleted me as a friend. i replied and told her it was a misunderstanding and apoligized for the misunderstanding, but not my comment itself. She admitted she overreacted and said I didnt need to apologize, then she never requested to refriend me and hasnt replied to any comments I have made on her new blogs. lol, I just dont understand some people. I guess if somehow she reads this, she will block me from her site, but I really dont care anymore, cause i never did anything wrong from the beginning. Stuff online can be so odd, ha ha.
I have trouble keeping friends IRL and online. In my past the majority of them ended up having feelings for me that weren’t reciprocated. I’ve been with my husband 5 years and have had too many experiences where I lost a friend because they wanted to cross a boundary. So I tend to not really let myself get close to anyone anymore. It’s a bummer, but I guess I just wasn’t really “cut out” for a close circle of friends. Maybe after we have babies I’ll meet other moms or something.
Well, for what it’s worth (which, unfortunately, isn’t much) I dig you Dan. Dug your post too.
You aren’t truly ‘friends’ with other internet people until they’ve threatened very publicly to sue you, posted pictures of every room in your house and kids and dogs on public websites behind your back to make fun of you, frantically told people you poisoned them and hit them when they came to visit, showed up without warning from a town 12 hours away to sleep on your couch and then you find out they brought a gun, stalked you behind your back with fake names and smiled at you at the mall when you finally run into them, promised to make all your dreams come true and then dragged you into being attacked at a very large convention till the police had to step in… When 3 ‘really good’ friends in a row wind up letting you know after a solid year they’ve got borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, or severe depression that they were hiding and it suddenly explodes your internet world so badly you literally have to serve cease and desist for internet stalking and change your email because they’ve screwed up the rest of your social life so badly, send me a message. I’ll say “there, there” like Sheldon Cooper and leave you completely alone because you can trust me to do that.
If people feel the need to talk to you every day and compliment you constantly and ask your opinion all the time and tell you secrets and their life stories and how their sex lives are going, sooner or later you’re gonna get burned. Lotta really needy people out there who don’t talk to other people in real life like they should be doing. I know I sound cold, and I know people need moral support and friendship, but the internet is no replacement for actual faces, voices, handshakes and hugs, smiles and tears, and genuine help from real family or neighbors. I’ve seen some really sad and scary meltdowns online with people I had no clue needed more help than I could possibly give them. Being flattered by internet love goes down a drain real fast when a naive person makes the wrong faux pas because they aren’t experienced to tuning in to what buttons need pressing.
I’ve been on xanga forever. I like this blog. But yeah, you’re pretty naive. That’s ok. Doesn’t stop hurting, though, so grow a callous. Some people get pretty good at being able to still be friends on the internet, but I had to bail on that notion, just don’t have that in me I guess. I know the internet can be a life saver for many people, and it’s a wonderful way to get through a really bad night or week or month or year, but sooner or later, people doing the meltdowns need to own them and apologize, because *dang*. No one owes you that. That’s a hard thing to do when there’s too much on their plates, I know. Next best thing is never take another person personally on the internet. If they say crap for attention, they’ve tagged themselves as attention whores. If they lose it all over you out of the blue, you prolly saved someone else from catching all that.
You seem to be doing a lot of introspection lately.
@Somefishytales - true, I’ve been told that I’m how they thought I’d be but shorter… I’m not that short ;-P 5’2 hehehe
Dan you are human….this shocks me (joking) thoughtful post, I enjoyed this.
I hear ya!
I’ve met only a few people on here I would truly want to meet in person and be actually friends with. There are many others who just are internet friends, that I’d love to get to know better and be better friends with, they’re just too busy. And sometimes that sucks. *or they don’t seem to care, so that sucks too, haha*
But, like I said, there are the few that I would want to meet, because I believe our friendship is real. One person I’ve talked to on the phone. Others I would make an effort to meet. And you’re one of them, Dan!
But yes, the majority? Just a comment here or there and that’s the extent of it. I don’t mind that. But it is hard.
@raspberryjade - Yeah, same here. I’m nowhere near as awesome in real life as I can appear to be on the internet. And I’m not very awesome here either.
On the Internet or in real life, they require commitment.
It sounds like that one lady was having an emotional affair with you. Did you like it?
like total BFFs dan!
I have internet friends that I’ve been friends with for 20 years. Most of them I’ve met in person. We still interact in various social networking settings. I met my previous husband on the internet 20 years ago and we were married for 15 years. You can form long-lasting friendships on the internet. You just have to be as picky on the internet as you would be if you met them in a bar or at the grocery store or at your kid’s little-league game. It’s just another venue.
Internet fredships have made Mak Zuckerberg a very wealthy boy. I now his Godless Chinese commy girlfriend (/sarcasm) is very wealthy as well. So where was God when he handed over billions of dollars to a “Godless Commist”. Why is Go mosterating his most faithful Chritians and punishing them with hopeless despair and poverty?
It’s disheartening when you feel attached to some blogger and he/she suddenly disappears from the internet. You have to wonder if the person died.
I’m sure you’ve done your own share of it, Dan. The internet is difficult even for the sane people because we can’t read intention or tone and have to give people much, much more of the benefit of the doubt when we believe them. Considering some of your blog posts, I can see why someone would have trouble giving you the benefit of the doubt in not wanting to cause trouble. If you want people to take you seriously online you have to create consistency, where you always talk about serious things in a serious manner. You don’t really do that. I don’t really care because I’ve only been a casual reader here and there for the past few years, but in all honesty, I’d never trust you with any part of my life I wouldn’t be ok with ending up as your sometimes-trolling type of blogposts.
@emberfly_layouts - I can’t believe you’re still around after so long too! AND ME TOO. Same layout too.
yup it’s hard.
why the objectification of woman?