h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Online friendships differ from real-life ones in one majorly important way: how instable it is and how quick it can end.

Online, say something that would normally be inflected in real life to show mildness or sarcasm, like, "I'm so mad at you!" can be taken very differently. Saying something wrong can end a friendship, even if you didn't mean it.

If one doesn't send an e-mail to another for a month, you could say the friendship has ended. This is because of how limited online friendships are, in that you must talk or forget about contact.

Online friendships are also tainted by the fact that the charming 16 year old girl on the other end may be a horny, anti-social, 57 year old ex-convict. You can't tell.

You cannot go to a movie or eat dinner with someone online. The relationship is solely text-based, making for somewhat emotionless, idle chat. And emoticons () don't always help add that "personal" touch in a "serious" online friendship.

That's not always true. You just have to be creative to make an online relationship go beyond text. I have a lovely friendship with a guy who found me on ICQ a few months ago, and we do all sorts of things together. Beside the point that he is half way across the world from me. He is more a part of my life than many "real" boyfriends I have had over the years. And the 6 hour time difference makes it even better.

We leave each other messages every day, even if we don't have the time to chat. It's always a pleasure to wake up and see if he has left a poem, or emailed me a cup of coffee and some breakfast, or left a note on my fridge. Once he sent a WAV file with an Italian lesson he made for me, sometimes just a "hello there" with his sexy accent. And I'm planning to make a file of me playing the accordion for him this weekend--not too sure he'll love that, but he wants to hear.

I'm making him a cybervacation in my town. Take pics of many of the things I do, and will put it all together and send it over. And when I mess with the pics I have of him with photoshop, it is really kind of erotic. I know exactly what he feels like, through tracing him when I cut him out of pics and put him in other places.

The best part is communicating with someone who thinks very much in the way I do, and trying to push my way through the screen and make him feel me. It can be done. And that's good enough, for now.

As far as my experience with my friendships here on h2g2 goes, I've found it a really neat experience to meet and get to know people (amoebas, possums, birds of prey, whatever) from all over the world. It's not the same kind of friendship as I have with my friends that I see in RL at school, church, and home, but it's still a friendship nonetheless. I worry about them when I don't hear from them for a few days, I give advice and support when I can, and they do the same for me.

You say that it's easier to fall apart as friends and take things wrongly online than in RL... I agree. So it takes a bit of caution when you have online friends. You have to be extra careful what you say. If only people always thought twice in real life....

Anyway, to sum up, I don't think there's much "verses" going on between online friendships and real life ones. To use an over-used comparison, it really is apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but they have different tastes and textures.

*steps off soap box...*

Magnolia:

I honestly congratulate you on your successful online relationship. However, isn't hard to disagree with the fact that it's nothing like a real friendship. Wouldn't you like him to hear your accordion in real life, wouldn't you like to talk to him face-to-face? Wouldn't you love to really show him through your town?

Or, would that spoil the relationship?

Through the h2g2 meetups in London, I've met quite a few researchers... with interesting results. I've ended up getting along socially better with different people there to the ones I normally chat to online. (I'm not saying that I didn't get along with anyone)

However, I think I can honestly say that I know more about some of my online friends than I do my 'real life' friends. There's something about talking online which doesn't hold back - we can express our feelings easier without being ridiculed (because, as said above, friendships can be ended quickly and easily if we so wish), and also partly because of the type of people we meet online.

And since meeting some h2g2 people several times, I suppose that I could say that they are real life friends as well as online friends. And so the distinction becomes blurred between online friends and real friends who I'm just keeping in touch with until I see them next. See what I mean? Is there really *that* much difference between the friend who you talk to online, and the friend who you ring up occasionally because he lives 200 miles away and you only see him once a year? And by using the internet, we keep in more constant contact than by just having the occasional phone call.

I think the best thing is to blur the distinction even more. Some people feel that they have to keep their online friendships seperate from their real life friendships, but I think they are missing out. The whole computer industry is gearing towards communications these days, and I think we'd be fools not to make the most of it.

One more facet to the argument: I suffer from depression and other disorders, which mean that I am currently incapable of having a job or being in full time education, and find it very difficult to do anything outside the house. Sometimes it takes me up to a week to get ready to go shopping, just for food and other necessities. Have you seen the British TV comedy 'Game On'? There's a bloke in that who acts a bit like me in that sense!
This means to me that the internet is a godsend. I've never been very good on the 'phone, and so if I didn't talk to my friends online I would probably lose them altogether (in fact I've lost contact with most of my friends who don't use the internet). I know this isn't a stable situation, and I don't want it to stay like this, but while I'm like this it's far better than nothing.

Anyway, I'll stop writing now as everybody has probably stopped reading by now. I know that I often skip long postings in conversations, now matter how interesting they may be. I might as well talk about llamas, for all it matters. Llamas! Llamas! BwwwaaaaaPPP... see, nobody's paying attention. *waves hand in front of everybody's faces*

That's a good point, Peregrin. One of my (real-life) best friends moved a few hundred miles away and now we only communicate by e-mail. So, is she now an "online friend"? Yes, I would say so.

Of COURSE I'd like to do plenty of things with/to him in real life. Still haven't figured out a way to taste him through the puter.
But until he comes over for a visit, some things are going to have to wait. Meanwhile, I'll continue to get to know how his mind works. And that is delightful, and easier without the distractions that would be there if he were physically with me.

Llamas?? Where? Who? What?



I payed attention, Peregrin.

Anyway, as usual, I have to agree: I'm not a phone person (except with my friend who's like 17 hours away in Missouri, I'll talk to him however I can), so I do most of my conversing over the internet, even with people I see everyday. Like I said, it's communication, it's a friendship, just a different form.

Though, I'd love to meet some of these people who I talk with daily, but seeing as there are no trans-atlantic meetups, that won't happen for a while.

I think we should have a meetup in the Azores... they're the nearest islands to the middle of the Atlantic

A genius idea, Peregrin! No wonder he got elected prez...

See? I told you that you were a genius...

Now if only I had the money to get to these islands....

Well, um, same problem here. Perhaps we should also find a clever way to fund ourselves.

*thinking*

Ow. That hurts.

*thinks again, despite the pain and smoke and grating of unused wheels it causes, and drives this forum even further off-course*

*Sprays some WD-40 into Amy's ear*

That any better?

Thinking is a confusing matter, I find. I get my computer to do it for me.
During power cuts, I sit and stare at the wall.

That does seem to help... but not much thinking's getting done on the appropriate subject here.

I do far too much thinking most of the time, and it's really the source of all my problems. I just don't see how people *can't* think about some stuff. Perhaps because it causes these problems...? I don't know.

After a week of non-educational activity consisting of watching tv while out of school, my brain is about gone. I guess, in a way, it's sort of like staring at a wall with moving pictures. Tomorrow, when I finally return to school, will really shock my system.

I've just visited your user page Amy and noticed the Geek Code... excellent I've worked mine out now! It's a fantastic idea isn't it, why didn't I think of it.

I open up to my online friends far faster then real life ones following a few incidents of things I thought were said in confidence becoming hot topics of gossip. There is less danger of that when you are talking to someone in Thailand.

Have you ever found that when you meet people in real life you regret telling them so much? And is there any danger in being so honest?

Having met Galaxy Babe online, and striking up a very good friendship with her, I was dying to meet her. Thanks to the h2g2 meet up I finally did, and it was like meeting my long lost sister. I didn't regret telling her a thing, and was very upset when she went home.
If there had been no internet I would have never known she existed.
I know not all friendships started online are like that, but she is one of two people that I have met and found we're even better friends IRL than online. I have also met some that were not as good, but we they are men, so maybe that's why.

It is sometimes easier to talk online as it's not face to face, but still seems so personal. I even find it easier to talk seriously to my RL friends online.

Very intresting!

Very very intresting!!

I think we ought to have a h2g2 meetup sometime where we all *don't* get completely drunk. There are plenty of things I'd like to talk about with other h2g2 researchers without being brain-dead.