Making Friends - And More - On The Internet

I apologize in advance for the length of this post as it is a subject very prominent in my life.

Many people, especially those in my age bracket, are spending more and more time online. The internet is a wonderful tool to keep in touch with friends that no longer live nearby. Especially with various graduations - high school, college - we are constantly getting separated from a large chunk of those we are close with, and the internet provides a speedy way to stay in contact. Emails are faster than letters, and instant messaging is cheaper than calling (especially when you are paying for you own phone, but not your internet, as in my case). Inevitably we frequent websites where we can meet new people, and this opens up a whole new form of "getting to know" someone. It has many positive aspects, and of course the few negative ones.

As many will remember, before Facebook there was MySpace, and all of my friends had one and were friends with a bunch of random people I'm not sure they had ever even met. It became so popular, in fact, that my high school sent out notifications to parents about the potential dangers of their child putting information on the website. It was a perfectly logical concern - there were spaces for all sorts of information, and if the child was a little too naive, they could not only give detailed information on their profile, but could also meet unsafe people - effectively, child molesters. My mother, of course, talked to me about what I had posted (nothing important) and the dangers that could be found on the internet. I nodded and agreed while rolling my eyes, and went right back to blogging about how school sucked or boys were cute or whatever I was thinking about that day.

I'm not saying that there aren't crazy, unsafe people on the internet, but I was always a little miffed that internet activities got such a bad rep. There are unsafe people everywhere, and I'd rather unknowingly meet them online where I can log off whenever I feel uncomfortable than meet them in person where they can see how small and potentially weak I am, and could, if I wasn't careful, force something that is almost impossible to force on the web. Of course lying is more effective on the internet when you can't see the person in front of you looking creepy and untrustworthy, and I'm sure many have found victims this way and that's terrible. But every place has it's "bad crowd" that needs to be avoided, and hopefully people are finding places to hang out online that they can trust, or at least know well enough to spot the unsavories.

For example, I would hope that on Facebook everyone only friends those they know well and sets their profile to private for everyone else.

Another example: the website Gaia Online that I frequented often not too long ago can be figured out rather quickly - it's populated by teenagers, mostly, and primarily girls (often pretending to be guys). Certain forums can quickly be determined to be "not as safe" as other places, and I found the Art Freebies forum to be the most entertaining and filled with the nicest people. I made many friends on Gaia that are now Facebook friends.

I have also played my share of World of Warcraft, and after some trial and error, I found it ran smoother to hide the fact I was a girl or play with friends I knew outside the game. However, that does not mean that every player, or even most players, are creepy, socially awkward guys (I just had some bad luck at the beginning and had to learn the best way to meet new people). WoW has a reputation and a stereotype has formed about the players. Both are based in truth but rather exaggerated - we're not all unhygienic and overweight, living at home, no life, no friends, etc. Many players are normal people, people you would be surprised to find out played the game. Also, many players aren't addicted, having plenty of time for social activities with friends. I can't even count how many times an incredibly cute boy came into our college lounge and asked what server we played on after discovering we were running some dungeon together. So yes, it is possible to meet acceptable people on WoW, as well, including girls of various levels of geekitude (my level: high). And WoW becomes another wonderful place to meet new people and make friends.

Online friendships usually go from the original meeting place to some type of instant messaging and on to maybe friending on Facebook or emailing, or maybe even meeting in person somewhere populated. This is where the "advice" part of this post comes into play.

Internet relationships can be tricky. If it's platonic, and definitely going to stay platonic for both parties, it is very easy to flow through the above process. I met a good internet friend of mine while she was pretending to be a boy on Gaia. We started chatting more, somehow I got her MSN screenname, and later, after finding out her actual gender, we became Facebook friends. We are now insisting that we want to meet in person and probably will in the next year or two. She's a really great girl, completely normal, and having an internet friend, in my opinion, is completely healthy as well.

If the relationship is more romantic, for either or both sides, this is where it becomes tricky (and also rather annoying). I will be honest about this from the start - I am speaking from experience. I met the boy on Gaia my freshman year in college when I was having trouble making friends on campus. We eventually moved the primary part of our friendship to MSN instant messaging and became rather close. I valued his friendship highly, feeling able to talk to him about anything and everything, knowing he would listen. I never felt he wasn't who he said he was, despite the constant teasing from friends (and more serious concerns from parents) that he could be some old dude wanting to get into my pants.

There's a serious problem with this situation while you're in it. Everything becomes very idealistic, very unrealistic. I never met this boy in person, and because of that he was almost perfect in my mind. When you only get one aspect of someone - in this case, purely conversation - you miss quite a bit of who they actually are. I believe a big part of getting to know someone is seeing how they interact with other people, not just you, and you can't see that very well over the internet. Facebook helps in this regard, but I never became Facebook friends with this guy. Yet I was ignoring romantic college potential because no real person could live up to the fantasy I had created in my mind about how incredibly awesome this guy had to be.

There are other issues as well. Online relationships work like long distance relationships in that you aren't sure what the other person is doing when they aren't talking with you, and if you're the type of person to get jealous, you will get jealous and suspicious. This boy and I never were actually "dating" but there was mutual interest with hold-ups (I didn't want to be in an online relationship with a boy I had not met in person, and he didn't want to chance screwing up a good friendship by dating). Inevitably, I became very suspicious about other girls I heard about in his life.

Advice-wise, I would highly recommend NOT getting into a relationship online without first meeting the person, and even then not if you aren't going to see them rather frequently. With only the internet history to support you, if you aren't seeing them often I believe it will be hard to maintain. Like any long-distance relationship, you need to both be willing and able to work for it, to try your hardest to keep it going, to be willing to be completely honest with your partner. This is even more important when one or both partners haven't met those that the other spends the most time with outside of the relationship. I have a few close, chatty, flirty guy friends that may make some potential boyfriend uncomfortable if they don't know what the relationship is actually like. I know I have had this problem before when I am made aware of some girl I barely know who is extremely good friends with someone I'm interested in or someone I'm dating. Does she like him? Does he like her? Have they dated? Why HAVEN'T they dated? Etc. It itches at the back of the brain constantly, and isn't healthy if you can't talk about it.

There's positives to starting a romantic connection online, at least for me. I find it difficult to talk to boys I don't know very well, often stumbling over my words and giving up rather easily. Online it's easier to finish thoughts when you don't have to see the other person's confused/weirded out/bored expression while you're attempting to finish a sentence. In this way I also feel it's a bit easier to be more honest (again, at least for me) over the web, and if the other person is genuinely interested and is honest back you can create a great sharing base to build off of when you MEET IN PERSON, and SPEND TIME TOGETHER IN PERSON. With the difficult and awkward meet-and-greet out of the way, you can jump right into the friendship. Admittedly, there will still be some awkwardness just because it's different from what you're used to (my platonic internet friend and I have yet to manage a phone call, despite being determined to do so), but hopefully by this point you know what's ok and not ok to talk about, so you only have to deal with a fraction of the awkward rather than the whole awkward.

At this point, I think I'm going to stop. I know I've been rambling on for a bit now with no clear destination so I'm not going to attempt a decent conclusion. At this point, I open the comment box to you to share your thoughts and (potentially differing) opinions on online relationships - the good, the bad, the personal experiences (if you wish to share), the platonic, the romantic, the weird, the creepy, what you had for breakfast this morning - whatever comes to mind.

Thanks for reading :)