Online friends
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@pyrephox said in Online friends:
There's actually a phenomenon called the Online Disinhibition Effect
YAY I LEARNED SOMETHING TODAY
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@wizz said in Online friends:
What factors make y'all decide to move further? Is it solely just time and trust?
Time, trust, reciprocity, loyalty, shared sense of humour, shared values. While I don't think that RL/OL friends are exactly identical, I do think that the process of becoming closer at least is sort of similar. I need to know that they value me beyond just the context of the game; if we stop playing the same game, are we still friends? Are we ride or die or is this an alliance of convenience? Are my off-colour jokes the same as their off-colour jokes, or does one of us offend/annoy the other when we do this? How relaxed do I feel talking to them? If I slip up, do they show patience or am I cancelled?
Sometimes I need to hear a set of magic words to hook me in, anything from a pop culture reference to a political joke. And then I'm like, oh cool, we have something in common beyond just this game, and now we're vibing. Although usually it starts by just admiring them from afar based on their posts, characters or writing style, on these games.
There can be certain milestones that happen even ICly which can make or break a potential friendship. For example if we just TSed, do they stay very respectful and chill OOCly or am I now getting really weird vibes from them?
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@wizz said in Online friends:
This the more interesting question to me. I've definitely gone too far in online friendships, and I strongly suspect most of us could say they relate.
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Yes, absolutely. I have many that I've had for 20 years or more but especially in the 20 year range because this friends group "met" online in a due date club (when i was pregnant with my firstborn). I've only met a couple of the people but they're not the ones I've been closest to. And I have a few other online buddies that aren't in that "milestone life event" category.
Though I would say that most of the people I am very close to I've spoken with on the phone. Not all though.
I also have a pen pal via snail mail that I corresponded with for 27 years until her death. (She was 54 when I answered her pen pal ad, I've had a few others but not ones that lasted that long. I'm sad that pen palling isn't really a thing anymore, I would totally do that again).
Mostly what I need to have for a true friendship connection with someone it isn't possible to hang out with is more than a couple points of connection. By this I mean just hanging out talking about one hobby isn't enough. Usually there are connections of stage of life, several interests/activities, ect. But sometimes there is a special chemistry that is very much like falling in love (just not romanticly).
So its not a hard line. At least for me.
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I have numerous friends that I've never met in person. And all but two of my RL friends that I'm still close to, I met online first. And a lot of my online friends, I've met in person maybe once or twice, but that doesn't make them any less friends.
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@wizz said in Online friends:
What factors make y'all decide to move further? Is it solely just time and trust?
I have never met anyone I MUSHed with in person for over twenty years.
It’s about limits for me.
Mind, I buy people shit all the day, so —
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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I've been a Pizza Angel, so.
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@ganymede said in Online friends:
@wizz said in Online friends:
What factors make y'all decide to move further? Is it solely just time and trust?
I have never met anyone I MUSHed with in person for over twenty years.
I, on the other hand, recently asked someone if they were the person I'd met up with 20 years prior.
Turns out, yes. @Sunny and I had indeed met for drinks 20 years ago when she was on vacation in New Orleans, which is where I lived at the time. Her then toddler had tried to lick the French Quarter in many ways. It was delightful catching up with her.
Y'all, we old now.
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@ganymede said in Online friends:
Mind, I buy people shit all the day, so —
Why don't you buy me stuff?
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@kestrel said in Online friends:
I need to know that they value me beyond just the context of the game; if we stop playing the same game, are we still friends?
This seems to happen a lot. While you are playing the same game as someone then it's talking every day or several times a week. Then you stop playing and after a month or so it can feel like everyone's just forgotten about you because they don't have mechanics or lore questions to ask anymore, or anything outside of the game that they want to talk about with you. I suppose this happens with any sort of hobby that you connect through - once that shared interest flounders people start to fade away.
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@ravengirl said in Online friends:
Then you stop playing and after a month or so it can feel like everyone's just forgotten about you because they don't have mechanics or lore questions to ask anymore, or anything outside of the game that they want to talk about with you.
It's not even that.
It's that you're often literally out of sight. Like -- not appearing on channels or Discord servers, probably buried in the list of DMs. There is nothing there to grab the attention of people like me. So it's not that I don't want to talk. It's just that you're not in my line of sight, and my brain is not the type to go hunting people down. I don't even do that with Rl friends. I can go months or years without messaging them, too.
That's just people.
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I have decades old friendships with people I've never met in person, and people I have met in person but met on games.
Yeah, they are real friends and it's not particularly odd or different from other friendships.
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Online friends are a trap for me. On one hand I'm far more comfortable communicating via the written word than verbally. My online friends tend to be involved in my hobbies so I have a lot to talk about with them. And that makes the relationship so much more meaningful than with anyone from my real life because I am not going to try to explain MUDs and gaming to my technologically illiterate older coworkers. Another appeal is that you can change online identities like you change underwear, so if I mess up a friendship or realise my current group of friends are racists ( it's happened! ) I can just digitally skip town and start again somewhere else. I find myself doing that every 3 years.
But it's a double edged sword. I will never tell an online friend where I live or what my name is, or what exactly I do for work. You can't take that information back once it's out. As a result I feel emotionally distant from both online and offline friends. They will never be that close to my heart.
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@arkandel said in Online friends:
Are online friends real friends? Where do you draw the line, if you do?
Yes.
None of you count.
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I'm a solipsist, so I don't even consider my real friends to be real.
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Online folks that I vibe with are friends but like @Derp says there are levels. Heck I even have met and been helped out/have helped out friends from online physically and financially.. I'm even currently partners with someone I met on Tempest (wod mush).
Sadly around 2012 I went through some shit and basically became a hermit ooc. But I still consider a lot of those folks friends and would absolutely do what I can to help them if they needed it.
People who you can connect with are rare.. who cares if they are virtual pen pals or someone that I connected with online then in rl. Some folks I stay strictly on game communication with. Either way, they're still someone I care for and that to me is a friend, no matter what level of trust/ooc commitment there is between us.
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Having recently gone through some not so fun situations, this post got me to think about what constitutes friendship online -- and how different people can feel about them.
I tend to think of my friendships online as real. If I am chatting to you about real-life issues, we know the names of one another's cats and spouses -- how is that different from any other friendship? If I am there for you when shit hits the fan and you desperately need somebody to talk to, how is that not friendship?
I've made a fool of myself like this a number of times. Invested a lot of time and energy in a friendship only to find that when I disagreed with the other person about something or I was the one in need of support, they vanished. Last time, they vanished while blaming me for the actions of another player (whom I still agree with, for the record) and telling me I was too exhausting for them to deal with.
They're entitled to that view, of course. But it's an experience that has taught me that while I want to think online friendships are as real as real life ones, they are not. The lack of accountability that you can just block someone if you get bored with them or have sucked them dry -- it means that you are easy prey for a certain kind of people.
And much as I want to get along with everyone, I have to keep that in mind.
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@l-b-heuschkel This can happen with real life friendships too, betrayal, ghosting, or just life taking them to a different place. Has and will again. So it's about the same in my estimation.
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@littlelizard said in Online friends:
@l-b-heuschkel This can happen with real life friendships too, betrayal, ghosting, or just life taking them to a different place. Has and will again. So it's about the same in my estimation.
It can. It's just easier to do online because there is no accountability. And because when you meet face to face, it is often easier to tell if the friendship is really more of a 'I will use you as an emotional dumpster and throw you away when you are full' situation.
