I used to think that as we got older, we changed the definition of friendship. For young kids, a friend is just about anyone you meet that hasn’t been mean to you yet. In high school, your friends are the people that you can stand for the longest period of time. In college, a friend is a person that shares your common interests. Out in business world, they become the people that you work with. Always, in life, friendship is controlled by the people you have access to. That is was just the way of the world. Then, along came the internet.
Friends we have never “met”
The internet really changed what friendship means. Where we were once basically forced to pick friends from the people we had access to that bugged us the least, now we have access to everyone. Now, we can choose the people that annoy us the least from a global pool. We can connect through common interests easily on social network sites like Twitter, Facebook and even Livejournal. It makes it a lot easier to find awesome people.
Its a new type of friendship
Some people are still stuck in the past and can’t accept that the new type of friendship is a true friendship. How do you consider someone your friend if you’ve never actually met them? How is it possible to consider someone your friend when you don’t even necessarily know their real name? How can you build a level of intimacy that is required to consider someone a true friend? I think these are questions that are easily answered by the people that get it. I’m sure some psychologist could give us a bunch of latin that explains it. I think, a small measure of anonymity gives us the courage to show our true faces. We share more of ourselves, because there is less risk.
Meeting real people
For the last couple of months, I’ve been actually been going out and doing things with people. These people, come from the internet. Its strange, how easy it is to talk to someone in person once you’ve been chatting with them for a while on Twitter. People I had never met already seemed somewhat familiar to me. I easily recognized their speech patterns and to some extent even their voices. It was easy to have a conversation, because we were already used to talking to each other. It was proof that internet friendships are a real thing. It is an easy transition from twitter to tabletops.
Its a new generation now, and there is no excuse for hiding yourself away from the rest of the world. There are tons of awesome people out there, its time to just meet them.