Online Friendships

I have been having some very intense and in depth conversations with friends recently about the nature of online relationships. Just recently I took a straw poll on a forum I visit about how people met their friends and partners; amazingly over 75% of them said they met online. Now it could just be that as this was an online forum I was going to get that sort of answer…but what with the rise of internet dating, MySpace and the huge use of MSN for instant messaging, it’s the easiest way to talk to new people.

But what about those online relationships? Are they every bit as good as a real one? Can they lead to a real one? Or conversely can you further a real relationship by chatting online?

I would say that online relationships, and I mean friendships of whatever type, can be possibly more honest and at the same time less honest when it’s conducted on the internet. What do I mean by that? Well, it is potentially more honest because, and I’m speaking from experience here, I tend to be more open and direct when I’m not talking to someone face to face – without all the physical hints and body language reading that normally goes on in a conversation all your remarks and comments have to be either more direct or qualified somehow. It’s easier to just come out and say, I like you, or I don’t agree with you, when you’re not sitting opposite them and you know that you can simply switch off if you can’t deal with it any longer. Of course we’re all aware that internet conversations can also be a huge pack of lies, but I think mostly people tell the truth…I certainly think that the friends I have online tell me the truth, I tell them the truth, always. Well, I say always…erm…actually I can be ‘economical’ with the truth in order to spare feelings and embarrassment …. Just as I would in the real world, but I’m not talking about huge whopping lies, I mean being sensitive to others’ feelings, and my own feelings too.

Is the online relationship as good as a real one? It’s different; a real one has a physical presence, you can hug a friend who is there. But an online friend can be there for you in different ways and in many respects they can give you their undivided attention which you may not get with a ‘real’ friend. I’m loath to say that online friends aren’t real friends, because they are – I know that some of my online friends know far more personal and private things about me than many of my friends in the real world. Certainly there are online friends who are more present in my life than my closest friends in the real world, simply because I work from home writing and I catch up on the net each day pretty much; not so with the real world friends. But you can’t go to the pub or out for a meal with an online friend. And there’s the rub.

Entirely different worlds. Does it work when you move between the worlds? I find it odd to talk to my close friends from the real world online – maybe it’s because they don’t use computers as much for their jobs so they can’t type as fast, or they simply express themselves better face to face. But I always find the internet to be a barrier for chatting to real world friends. Yet the online friends, none of whom I’ve ever met in the real world, I can talk to for hours and share things both personal and virtual – sending links to great sites that they may like, telling them about something small that happened in my day. Would that transfer to the real world? I have yet to find out.