Is it possible to be friends with someone you know only on-line? How much has to be known about someone (and they about you) in order for you to be friends?
It is my belief from personal experience that such a feat is probable and possible. I own a Playstation 3 and have an online ID that I use every time I play. Therefore I meet new players in every game I play. However, if you join a "clan", the term used in the online gaming realm meaning "team", you have to be able to give up some sort of information to the other members such as your time zone, name, and favorite color (hahahaha that part is a joke). Anyways, going back to online friends, this past year I decided to make a clan of my own for a game called Warhawk which has become the largest PS3 multiplayer game with over 400,000 players worldwide all involved in over 1000 major clans. Well, I hoped on the bandwagon, and opened an online recruitment room where I gauged the talent of various players. After 3 hours of wasted time yielding only one possible prospect, I was about to turn off my PS3 when I saw that three players (SuperJam79, Grizzla90, and IngaNarf) on my Friend’s List who I had sent messages back and forth casually were playing Warhawk too. I sent them messages asking if they would be interested in joining my clan. About a week later I received replies from all of them saying that they were interested. I arranged a chatroom and they joined. It was quite an interesting experience to say the least not knowing what to expect at all. It turned out that they were all my age, so it made it easy to figure out when we had tests so we couldn’t schedule battles on those nights. We got a rigorous and ambitious battle schedule set up, and started practicing. Well, after about three months we had a 1-1-10 record, and so we said we’d take a break for awhile work on our skills. However, we were on first name basis by then, so myself, Chris, Jamar, and Tristan all knew each other pretty well just from playing video games. For about 2 hours a day. As crazy and as anti-social as it sounds, I looked forward to talking with them every day. On the weekends, I would help Jamar with Spanish in a chatroom, Tristan and I would swap the latest gaming news, and Chris and I, being the oldest, would talk about literally everything, nothing was off limits. Sometimes his girlfriend would get on with us and we’d just chill out on Saturday nights when nothing was going on. Eventually, we added each other on Facebook, so now we can stay in touch at anytime. From what Chris had described, he lives fairly close to Shields, and since my high school choir toured NYC this year, Tristan came to one of our concerts. I think that overall, you have to be careful online, but I personally don’t have any problems with having online-only friends.
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4 comments:
This is all fine and dandy when you consider a friend only as someone with whom you can have fun, enjoy yourself, or simply converse. But what about a genuine friend who will look out for you when you need it most? A friend who will be there for you in your darkest hour? I know it sounds kind of lame, but this is what real friends do. Can such a friend be someone you know exclusively on the web?
I think a friendship can start out on online. It could be something similar to the friendships Aristotle mentions which are based on how pleasantness. But in order to have a close friendship that can't be dissolved easily you need to physically meet the person and still be able to click with them and all their flaws. Because isn't reality sometimes harder to accept than the front you get from a computer?
Jethro,
Why do you think that someone you've never met face-to-face wouldn't be there when needed most? It seems to me to possible to remain friends without constant face-to-face contact....perhaps for a seriously long period of time. So if this is true, why wouldn't people be able to never meet face-to-face and be friends.
I think the whole concept of "internet friends" is interesting and can be perceived differently, pending on your experience. Thus if you have never experienced having an "internet friend" that you met on the internet and were only able to communicate over the internet, you would have a much more difficult time understanding those who do and/or have online friends. However, I believe in order to really answer the question if an internet friend only is a real, genuine friend, you would have to explain what you believe a real and/or genuine friend consists of. I believe it is possible, but some times speaking over the internet or through text is much different than in person, such that what you thought was a good relationship that you felt comfortable in, wasn't all it was cracked up to be, thus when you meet in person, things seem more weird than you would have thought.
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