Every day, I sit at my computer at a specific hour and log into MSM Messenger. As the icon comes to life, I see that my cyberfriends are now online and ready to chat with me. These people have never seen me in person and I have never seen them either. Sometimes, we don’t even live in the same time zones. It is a wonder that we all manage to get along and create friendships that run equal to, if not even better, than the friendships that we make in real life.
Who ever thought that the time would come when technology would remove the awkwardness of making friends and joining social circles? As I sit here thinking of how to express my thoughts about how painful it was for me to make friends during the years when my social life should have been brimming with fun and experiences, I slowly come to realize that I am having more fun than ever and easily making friends now compared to when I was much younger. something that I have learned to attribute to the fact that I was raised as an old soul by my family and therefore had a bit of a hard time fitting in with the modern ways of those around me who should have been my friends.
I was often the butt of jokes and pranks because I was not privy to the ways of the kids around me. So I tended to come across as weird and lonesome at school. In truth, I was simply not surrounded by the right people. I was in the wrong crowd and therefore tended to choose the wrong people to create friendships with.
Friendships. Friends. It is never easy to create such relationship bonds in person. Perhaps because the tendency of people who socialize in the real world is to create the first impression of a person based upon what they see. It is a clique system that types people mostly by their appearances first then their personality next. As such, I often found myself a failure in that respect because I have never been a person who tries to keep up with the Joneses. I am more like a WYSIWIG editor. What You See Is What You Get.
I was a social cripple growing up. My fear of rejection was so strong that I would always opt to just remain by myself with a good book rather than try to make friends and then be judged or rebuffed by anybody I approached. I know now that I was not the only person who had that fear.
There are many out there who would rather be alone rather than risk rejection. However, thanks to the social networking sites, forums, and chatrooms provided by the internet, nobody has ever been alone or friendless again. Relationships can now be built without fear of judgment and rejection because the internet offers us the physical anonymity that forces one to refocus his judgment of a person solely on personality and compatibility alone. In other words, on the traits that create a bonding, lifelong friendship. Looks do not matter as much on the internet. The ability to discuss and get along with people is all that matters.
In real life, we would be looking for friends that share our particular interests by joining social clubs and gatherings, limiting the friendships made to a particular area but not eliminating the first impressions judgment factor. The internet allows people of the same interests to come together and discuss amongst themselves. Even better, we do not have the prejudgment factor, and the friendships made are not limited to a particular area or location. On the internet, I have friends as far away as Korea and as near as the next town. I met them through MSM Messenger, YM, AIM, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, the meeting places seem endless. I have known these people for as little as 2 weeks to as long as 10 or more years.
Like all relationships, the key to making any friendship work is connection and communication. Something hard to do in real life because everyone is just too busy earning a living. But, the internet has made it possible for us to lifestream our connections through chatting, blogging, forum participation, and other forms of real-time or delayed communication. What is important is that we now stay in touch with our friends on a 24/7 basis and are constantly caught up with each other.
Mind you, we stay in touch with many friends all at the same time, such services allow friendships to be broadened and keeps one open to creating even more friends because of the open communication method. Since connections are made on a more intellectual level with these people, we tend to keep returning to the chat or community to share more thoughts. By doing so, we develop a relationship with these people that often become lifelong bonds.
Believe it or not, I have created such a bond with one particular person on the internet. Let us call this person Riley. I first met Riley 7 years ago at a fan forum for a particular celebrity whom we both liked. We started on the wrong foot because, as I said, I can be considered a social cripple. Yes, even on the internet I had a lot to learn about making friends. Due to the anonymity of the situation though, we managed to get past the first problems and get down to getting to know each other because, unlike in the real world where we would have to struggle to find common ground, on the internet, we already had the common ground and that served as the foundation for the friendship that we developed over the years.
As time progressed, we did not realize that we had become steadfast friends and began to share a more personal level of friendship already. We shared phone numbers and whenever possible, call each other just to catch up and talk. Each time that happens, it does not seem like we had just spent 2 hours talking earlier in the day via MSM. When I had a death in my family, Riley was the first person I called to tell about what happened.
Riley was there to be my anchor during that sad period of my life. When things do not seem to be going my way, Riley gives me the support I need to keep going. During the times when not so confident about myself, count on Riley to give me an effective pep talk and confidence booster.
Just as Riley is my best friend for life, I am the same as Riley. When Riley was hospitalized for a major operation, I was one of the few people allowed to get medical updates. That is the kind of relationship we have built over the years. Amazingly enough, nobody wants to believe that such a relationship can be built over the internet. I always tell them that internet friendships are not shallow. It is deeper than any physical friendship anybody can have.
Riley and I view each other as siblings, that is why we have each other’s back. Indeed, our friendship began at the forum and progressed into the chat community. Through time, the relationship went beyond just the common interest as we realized that we had more in common than we first thought. Now, we try to make time every night to chat. If not, emails are very regular. Either way gives us an insight into the daily life of one another. That insight is what helps us to create, cultivate, and maintain our friendship to this very day. Who would have thought that the internet would have changed our lives in such a wonderful way?
As I see the social networking sites mushrooming all over the web, a smile crosses my face. I think about how these sites help to create thousands of new friendships every day and how all those newly made friendships will also count years and turn into almost blood-linked relationships as well. The internet did not just open the doors of international friendship to the world, it blew the top and walls off. There is no great divide when it comes to internet-based relationships, no friendships. Only international camaraderie, brotherhood, and sisterhood. Did I remember to mention that Riley is an English-speaking Korean living in Korea.? Now that is a friendship…
Work Cited
Agre, Phil. “Building An Internet Culture“. Telematics and Informatics. (1998). Web.
Maki. “Relationshps and Online Social Networks: The Value of Sites Like Twitter and Plurk”. Dosh Dosh. (2008). Web.
Ziga, Lisa. “Physicists Investigate ‘Best Friends Forever’”. physorg.com. (2008). Web.