Friends.
Friendship.
It is a concept that is as integral to the human psyche as love and in many cases can last longer, bring us richer relationships, and for the most part help make us better human beings. From that close confidant to that high school friend who made those turbulent days tolerable friendship is more important to our own wellbeing than just about anything in our society.
I have been one of those who has railed against the cheapening of Friends and Friendship in this age of Facebook and other social media networks. I believe that things like Facebook have turned the idea of having friends into the most shallow of ideals and made it more of another notch in your belt type of affairs. As well a great number of people, whether they have online identities or not, believe that it is impossible to develop deep online friendships.
In many ways I can understand how people can come to this conclusion but they are wrong. I was reminded of this today when I read an excellent post by SuzeMuse. In it she related a personal experience of just how an online friendship can slide into a real world one that is then enriched by the ability to keep that friendship alive because of the online connection.
Jon Swanson and I were friends for a year before we ever met in person. About 15 minutes before we met for the first time, I called him on the phone to get directions. Up until that moment, when he picked up the phone and said “hello”, our friendship had been entirely based in text on a screen. A few minutes later, we found ourselves sitting across from each other at lunch, and it was like we’d been having lunch together for years. The in-person conversation picked up right where it left off on the screen. And after meeting that day, the conversation moved seamlessly back to the computer screen. Online friendship is a funny thing – it makes no difference how you connect. It’s only important that you connect.
I have to agree with SuzeMuse on this because I have enough history to fall back on to prove that this is indeed the case. In fact I would also say that a lot of the friendships I have had over the 20 plus years of being online mean more to me than any offline ones I have had, and they have lasted longer.
It’s not hard to look back at my days of running bulletin board services and the people I met there that then carried over to join the ones I met while running a NNTP newserver and then the web forums community at WinExtra.
Friendships that have developed over that period of time that are still as strong today, and as close. I have been a part of families when their grandchildren have been born and watched them as they have grown. I have had friends who met through the forums who have traveled around the world to be with each other, and to get married.
I still remember the agony I felt during the time where I was temporarily forced off-line at the time one of my closest friends was dying. It was only because of the people in those forums and IRC that managed to let a very close friend locally know that the time had come. I still have the CD with all the posts and messages of the loss we all felt. I still miss the man to this day and even though much to my everlasting regret I never met him face to face; but even now with him being gone his is still my friend.
It is also true as SuzeMuse points out there will be those online friendships that fade over time, just as real world friendships do. While I might not miss friendships created in high school or later there are online friendships, with some people who I have never met and others who I have, that I truly miss. People like Critter, cicp^p and Sandy, Allan, Jason; and then there are those who have drifted off to the Facebook world where the friendship can still be appreciated but there seems to be a difference.
Friendship, true friendship, doesn’t care how it is formed. Nor does it come about with the simple click of an Accept button. Friendship is something that is born out time where people share their real hopes and desires, commiserate together over our changes in life’s situations, and most importantly grow together.
Time doesn’t affect friendship. I have friends who I may not see for months at a time, and we live in the same town, but when we get together for that coffee time hasn’t past. I have friends who I may not have emailed or even IMed for months but when that email arrives, or they pop into IRC, or ping me on IM my day is suddenly a little brighter.
Sure the term friend or friendship might have been bastardized in our Facebook world but real friendship – well that can never be hijacked by some transient service. Friendship is of the heart and emotion and that will never change regardless of how we discover and are enriched by that friendship.
