“You remember it’s an internet friend whom you’ve never met so you sheepishly distance yourself from the love still coursing through your brain but, hey, why can’t this love be yours?”
I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for all the great ways we’ve learned to connect with one another online. Yes, there is hell to pay here too. But let’s pay the love forward. Did you see yourself in one of the digital friendships I described yesterday in my essay? What would you add to the list? Any good stories about about your online friends? Let’s talk about it and build a rich vocabulary for connection, together.
As always, I’ll be reading and responding to your comments in real-time for the next hour.
When COVID-19 hit, I had to take my recovery meetings online. Suddenly, my 7am 12-step meeting went from twenty people in a downtown church basement to around a hundred people all over the world. I've experienced the miracle of helping and being helped by people all over the world.
I am a middle school teacher, and I've been Very Online for nearly 20 years (I started my first Blogspot back in 2004!). I started teaching at a high-need school this year, and I posted my Amazon Wishlist. Before I could blink, my entire dining room was overflowing with books/pencils/notebooks for my students, and 90% of the items came from people I've never hugged or met in person. I often feel loved by my online friends because I think it's sometimes easier to be honest or genuine with people who may not know my spouse/friends/real life but to see them love my group of 168 8th graders solely because they know and love *me* was so profound and wonderful. They know how much I love reading and writing, and seeing them want to help me pass that love on to kids they'll never meet has been so touching. I've been held up so often by people I know online: they share my writing and hype my stuff and keep my secrets, but I love the tangible reminders I feel every day, especially this year when teaching feels so challenging. It's a reminder that what I do matters and that I am loved, which can be hard to remember in a room of glaring middle schoolers.
I'm in my late 20s but am new to internet friendships. Every Sunday night since November 2020 I've tuned into a livestream of one of my favorite musicians on Youtube, along with hundreds of other fans. The chat section became such a source of camaraderie for us all. People joked, checked in on each other, celebrated wins and mourned hard losses together. It was moving. At first I was wary of joining in, but everybody was so respectful of privacy and just wanted to nerd-out about music and take a break from thinking about the pandemic. One of the viewers turned out to be a composer like myself, and reached out to me via my professional Facebook page to talk shop--it threw me initially, but it turned out to be a genuine thing based in our common interests/vocations, just a few messages back and forth. The weekly livestream is ending next week, and I'm sad I won't be gathering with my digital friends anymore. Never thought I'd feel this way about people I haven't met.
I have a friend that I met on tumblr almost a decade ago on a fan blog for a book series. She's been in Canada, then New Zealand, then France, and I'm still in the US. We eventually moved to snapchat (lol) so we could text without terrible cell phone bills. We've talked nearly every day through grad school, through jobs, moving all over our respective countries, and have never met in person. I've spent hours talking with her about books, politics, our dads, etc. Our snapchat streak is now longer than her entire relationship with her husband. And since she got married, our friendship feels more surface-level and like it could disappear at any time. It's been beautiful, and I would be sad if this is where things ended.
I'm an "elder millennial" (about to turn 39) and I'm definitely not an oversharer or super active on social media other than reading and liking stuff and occasionally spouting off about abortion rights or baseball or classical music BUT I loved this post!! It made me think about the relationship I have with your Twitter feed in particular. Having read your memoir and poetry (and having lived in North Texas), I feel like I know you even though I don't at all. I think you hit a unique balance of sharing just enough that people feel invited in, but not so much that it's too much. And Caesar! I feel so invested in people's pets online. Long live Caesar! Please tell him a stranger on the internet thinks he's amazing.
Your article reminded me that I eventually married a man my ex-boyfriend met and befriended on Twitter. Obviously, there's a longer version of that story, but it's wild to think about it in this oversimplified way. It also helps me validate my affinity for maintaining relatively distant relationships via the internet when the real-life ones get more complicated than I'd like to deal with in the moment.
More than 10 years ago, I watched an Icelandic documentary about the life of a Buddhist monk living in Thailand (I consider myself Buddhist). He was ordained at a very young age in England (around 17/18 I guess, now he's over 50) and at some point he left the monkhood to get married and experience "normal life". He experienced that marriage was not for him and he ended up in the monastic community again. I'm not a nun but.... nevermind, what I want to say is that I could relate to some of the things he said or experienced. One day we became FB "friends" and I decided to go visit him back in 2011 and some years ago as well when I went to SEA. I had the opportunity to spend some days up in the mountain temple and enjoy the Buddhist festival that takes place at the end of the Buddhist lent. We've been digital friends since then (by email mainly since I deleted my FB account years ago). We do not write on a daily basis, but we do write to each other and talk about things, life and us. I know he's there, he knows I'm here.
I feel more protective of people I know online and assume that everyone is hyper-fragile. That relative vulnerability is probably no more true now than before the onset of the pandemic, given how hard life just is for most people in my worlds, but the restriction to online interactions reinforced a fear that even these online loved ones could become inaccessible ghosts, and I don't want to lose these people.
One other change I've noticed that is adjacent to your list (because these relationships aren't friendships) is an increasingly ferocious intimacy with the works of writers and other artists I know only online and through their works.
The other day I was getting lunch and a stranger called out my name. Yes? She recognized me from Instagram. We had a long talk about photography etc and she said she felt like she had met a celebrity. This conversation caused me to be late to a work zoom meeting but also it sort of made my day. Maybe leaving the house isn’t so bad?
Most of my online friends are book friends -- the ones who are writing, just finishing, slogging through things. I admit it - sometimes I get jealous of the ones who are finished with something that is taking me a very long time to do. And sometimes I get online with all these people who seem so funny, witty, observant, and yet honest and fun and just hit a lot of likes and bow out without trying to speak much because I edit myself before the words come out.
But in this group are a few women I've either met online or at a workshop. I can tell them things that my partner is sick of hearing. I can encourage them and be encouraged. And there is, among these, "The friend who inspires you to do what you’ve long known you needed to do." I have never told her how she helped me get over a serious crisis of confidence. I will now.
I enrolled in a masterclass for writers last Fall (via Zoom). 12 of us showed up with the intention of finishing our shitty first draft by the end of the 90 days. This was my first experience with a writing community. Especially because it was online, I didn't expect to walk away having formed a deep bond with a beautifully diverse group of writers. Now I'm convinced there's no way I could go through the process of writing a book without a community. We've all exposed our greatest fears, our trauma, our pain, and have been supported through all of it. We've since taken 3 additional masterclasses, we meet on Zoom to write together twice a week, and have a weekly meeting just to vent, get support on our work, and encourage each other. We're meeting IRL in a few weeks!
I deeply relate to the one about muting/blocking a friend, then un-muting/blocking and having to do it all over again...in this case, mine is a friend in real life, and via texts and hanging out in person (though they are someone who ALWAYS cancels last minute, too), all's well, but their online commentary (more on Facebook than Instagram) is wayyyyy too much. I just can't.
I have been on the internet since town BBSs were a thing in the late 80s, so I am definitely comfortable in this written chat medium, and can be guilty of feeling like I know a person well enough to be familiar when it's not really like that. As a fellow chaotic Sagittarius, I also realize that sometimes the jokes just don't land! But I do feel genuine deep affection for people over time.
I met a birthday twin on a comedy writer’s fan website and, it is a long story, but we are now real life friends. We’ve known each other for about 10 years. We haven’t met in person very often, but now it’s been enough times that it’s not as awkward.
In fact, I just met up with her a few weekends ago. It was on her turf, but away from husband and kids. She went to a memorial service on the occasion of her grandfather’s 100th birthday (he had died a few years ago, so it was mostly a celebration). We talked so much. It was fantastic. I met her sister and a college friend of hers and it only occurred to me, as I was driving back home, that they might look at me as the weird internet friend that they needed to vet for their flighty, weird friend or sister.
And, that’s not untrue, I guess. It *is* weird how we connected. But we’re important to each other. Sometimes I doubt it, but through a miracle of chance and through so many long conversations online which I reread sometimes, I know the connection is real.
We mostly correspond through Facebook messenger and that archive of letters is the only reason I’ve not deleted the app. I’m currently in the process of copying all correspondence into a word document. It’s so slow, though!
Thanks again for writing about this, Saeed. It’s nice that someone understands. Xoxo
The one that made me perk up my ears like a dog was this one:
The friend who inspires you to do what you’ve long known you needed to do.
You do it and you tell them.
~~
Years ago, there was a woman I worked with for a while. She left that company and we became friends on social media. We got together for drinks once. I confided in her about my rocky relationship. Fast forward two years later when I sent her a DM to tell her I left the relationship. Since then (2016) I have not seen her in person, but I had her on as a guest for a Twitch talk show I hosted last year, and I sent her my book of poetry when her father recently passed. That love is ours.
I don’t know how to do friendships! Part of it is that I completely burn my life down roughly every five years (Sag energy) but also part of it is that I feel super awkward most of the time. I usually feel like I’m into a friendship more than the other person and then I just kind of quit? But who knows if that’s true or if it’s just my perception.
Also my husband is one of the most amazing friends I’ve ever had. (And now I feel awkward, see?)
Back in the early days of the internet and AOL chat rooms I hit it off with Briget, who has been my Old Buddy Old Pal (OBOP) for 25+ years. We’ve seen each other maybe a dozen times, but we share laughs and Manilow and support through parenthood and marriage.
Likewise, I met Pam through an email chain - this was maybe even before chat rooms - for stepmoms of teens. Whew boy was that a rough time! We reconnected on Facebook and those teens are now incredible adults with kids and good relationships with us stepmoms. I’ve only met her in person once but our friendship is strong.
Online friends are friends. These two are friends that are closer than some irl friends I have now. (Insert brilliant and not too sappy reflection here)
I lived in L.A. for 15 years and I've been back twice but not really seen the people I used to hang out with due to schedules not syncing, etc. A couple of weeks ago one of my two cats was ill so I was absolutely distraught. Not only did I have the support of my current, local friends, but also some friends I've not seen in years from other countries (that I initially met online and then at sci-fi conventions), or whom I've only been online friends with since the LiveJournal days, and the Cali peeps all popped in with support, asking questions, commenting on every post and celebrating when the drama bomb of a void I have for a cat finally started eating again.
The friend you met ten years ago through food blogging. And then you met when you went to SFO, and then I met their husband and newborn when they came to NYC. We've spent maybe a month's worth of time together in ten years but they are family.
The community you built through a Discord server who you bullshit with in the silliest of ways, but they also fundraise for the most marginalized of the community, send birthday and whenever gifts, and feel like home.
The Twitter friend that retweets the WORST of the internet acting up and you want to mute for that alone but they are also hilarious and loving so you stay for the ride, for the ups AND downs.
I'm a part of a large Facebook community that started from a group of girls who went to American school in Okinawa in the late 90s. The community has spread to almost 300 members, you have to be invited by someone in the group so it's a hodgepodge of real life and internet friends. It was created to be a safe space, where we could talk about the things that excite us without worrying about the trolls showing up. It's been incredible, and some of them have been in my life as long as my non-digital friends. It's a beautiful thing.
In very late 2020 one of my online friends (a fellow artist I met through Instagram) gathered three of us together for an online roleplaying game, since we were all craving a game. I didn't know the other two people he'd invited, but in less than a year we've all grown very close. The magic of biweekly games conducted over voicechat and in-jokes and running gags quickly led to a close group of friends. It has the feel of new college friends, intimacy and joy in each other's company that quickly grows due to proximity and repetition. It feels strange to say I've known them for a relatively short period of time, but that shared game made us very important to each other.
Way back in the year 1998, I joined a Yahoo Onelist for what was then my favorite band. (For the kids, Yahoo Onelist is what later became Yahoo Groups, kind of a message board in email form.) Because there's only so much to say about one band, we talked about everything and nothing. That Onelist led to a bunch of real-life friendships, despite the fact that we were all located all over the world. It also introduced me to the person who lived halfway across the country and would eventually become a friend, then boyfriend, then fiance, then husband, then ex-husband, and now, again, a friend. While the relationship didn't end happily ever after, it did change the entire course of my life. I can't imagine who or where I'd be today had I not joined that group.
I will never forget trying to explain to my parents (in 1999) that I was kinda sorta dating someone I'd met on the internet. Again, in 1999. For the next 5 years, until it became more commonplace, my mom would call me excitedly every time she met someone who had also met their significant other on the internet.
When COVID-19 hit, I had to take my recovery meetings online. Suddenly, my 7am 12-step meeting went from twenty people in a downtown church basement to around a hundred people all over the world. I've experienced the miracle of helping and being helped by people all over the world.
I am a middle school teacher, and I've been Very Online for nearly 20 years (I started my first Blogspot back in 2004!). I started teaching at a high-need school this year, and I posted my Amazon Wishlist. Before I could blink, my entire dining room was overflowing with books/pencils/notebooks for my students, and 90% of the items came from people I've never hugged or met in person. I often feel loved by my online friends because I think it's sometimes easier to be honest or genuine with people who may not know my spouse/friends/real life but to see them love my group of 168 8th graders solely because they know and love *me* was so profound and wonderful. They know how much I love reading and writing, and seeing them want to help me pass that love on to kids they'll never meet has been so touching. I've been held up so often by people I know online: they share my writing and hype my stuff and keep my secrets, but I love the tangible reminders I feel every day, especially this year when teaching feels so challenging. It's a reminder that what I do matters and that I am loved, which can be hard to remember in a room of glaring middle schoolers.
I'm in my late 20s but am new to internet friendships. Every Sunday night since November 2020 I've tuned into a livestream of one of my favorite musicians on Youtube, along with hundreds of other fans. The chat section became such a source of camaraderie for us all. People joked, checked in on each other, celebrated wins and mourned hard losses together. It was moving. At first I was wary of joining in, but everybody was so respectful of privacy and just wanted to nerd-out about music and take a break from thinking about the pandemic. One of the viewers turned out to be a composer like myself, and reached out to me via my professional Facebook page to talk shop--it threw me initially, but it turned out to be a genuine thing based in our common interests/vocations, just a few messages back and forth. The weekly livestream is ending next week, and I'm sad I won't be gathering with my digital friends anymore. Never thought I'd feel this way about people I haven't met.
I have a friend that I met on tumblr almost a decade ago on a fan blog for a book series. She's been in Canada, then New Zealand, then France, and I'm still in the US. We eventually moved to snapchat (lol) so we could text without terrible cell phone bills. We've talked nearly every day through grad school, through jobs, moving all over our respective countries, and have never met in person. I've spent hours talking with her about books, politics, our dads, etc. Our snapchat streak is now longer than her entire relationship with her husband. And since she got married, our friendship feels more surface-level and like it could disappear at any time. It's been beautiful, and I would be sad if this is where things ended.
I'm an "elder millennial" (about to turn 39) and I'm definitely not an oversharer or super active on social media other than reading and liking stuff and occasionally spouting off about abortion rights or baseball or classical music BUT I loved this post!! It made me think about the relationship I have with your Twitter feed in particular. Having read your memoir and poetry (and having lived in North Texas), I feel like I know you even though I don't at all. I think you hit a unique balance of sharing just enough that people feel invited in, but not so much that it's too much. And Caesar! I feel so invested in people's pets online. Long live Caesar! Please tell him a stranger on the internet thinks he's amazing.
Your article reminded me that I eventually married a man my ex-boyfriend met and befriended on Twitter. Obviously, there's a longer version of that story, but it's wild to think about it in this oversimplified way. It also helps me validate my affinity for maintaining relatively distant relationships via the internet when the real-life ones get more complicated than I'd like to deal with in the moment.
More than 10 years ago, I watched an Icelandic documentary about the life of a Buddhist monk living in Thailand (I consider myself Buddhist). He was ordained at a very young age in England (around 17/18 I guess, now he's over 50) and at some point he left the monkhood to get married and experience "normal life". He experienced that marriage was not for him and he ended up in the monastic community again. I'm not a nun but.... nevermind, what I want to say is that I could relate to some of the things he said or experienced. One day we became FB "friends" and I decided to go visit him back in 2011 and some years ago as well when I went to SEA. I had the opportunity to spend some days up in the mountain temple and enjoy the Buddhist festival that takes place at the end of the Buddhist lent. We've been digital friends since then (by email mainly since I deleted my FB account years ago). We do not write on a daily basis, but we do write to each other and talk about things, life and us. I know he's there, he knows I'm here.
I feel more protective of people I know online and assume that everyone is hyper-fragile. That relative vulnerability is probably no more true now than before the onset of the pandemic, given how hard life just is for most people in my worlds, but the restriction to online interactions reinforced a fear that even these online loved ones could become inaccessible ghosts, and I don't want to lose these people.
One other change I've noticed that is adjacent to your list (because these relationships aren't friendships) is an increasingly ferocious intimacy with the works of writers and other artists I know only online and through their works.
The other day I was getting lunch and a stranger called out my name. Yes? She recognized me from Instagram. We had a long talk about photography etc and she said she felt like she had met a celebrity. This conversation caused me to be late to a work zoom meeting but also it sort of made my day. Maybe leaving the house isn’t so bad?
Most of my online friends are book friends -- the ones who are writing, just finishing, slogging through things. I admit it - sometimes I get jealous of the ones who are finished with something that is taking me a very long time to do. And sometimes I get online with all these people who seem so funny, witty, observant, and yet honest and fun and just hit a lot of likes and bow out without trying to speak much because I edit myself before the words come out.
But in this group are a few women I've either met online or at a workshop. I can tell them things that my partner is sick of hearing. I can encourage them and be encouraged. And there is, among these, "The friend who inspires you to do what you’ve long known you needed to do." I have never told her how she helped me get over a serious crisis of confidence. I will now.
I enrolled in a masterclass for writers last Fall (via Zoom). 12 of us showed up with the intention of finishing our shitty first draft by the end of the 90 days. This was my first experience with a writing community. Especially because it was online, I didn't expect to walk away having formed a deep bond with a beautifully diverse group of writers. Now I'm convinced there's no way I could go through the process of writing a book without a community. We've all exposed our greatest fears, our trauma, our pain, and have been supported through all of it. We've since taken 3 additional masterclasses, we meet on Zoom to write together twice a week, and have a weekly meeting just to vent, get support on our work, and encourage each other. We're meeting IRL in a few weeks!
I deeply relate to the one about muting/blocking a friend, then un-muting/blocking and having to do it all over again...in this case, mine is a friend in real life, and via texts and hanging out in person (though they are someone who ALWAYS cancels last minute, too), all's well, but their online commentary (more on Facebook than Instagram) is wayyyyy too much. I just can't.
I have been on the internet since town BBSs were a thing in the late 80s, so I am definitely comfortable in this written chat medium, and can be guilty of feeling like I know a person well enough to be familiar when it's not really like that. As a fellow chaotic Sagittarius, I also realize that sometimes the jokes just don't land! But I do feel genuine deep affection for people over time.
I met a birthday twin on a comedy writer’s fan website and, it is a long story, but we are now real life friends. We’ve known each other for about 10 years. We haven’t met in person very often, but now it’s been enough times that it’s not as awkward.
In fact, I just met up with her a few weekends ago. It was on her turf, but away from husband and kids. She went to a memorial service on the occasion of her grandfather’s 100th birthday (he had died a few years ago, so it was mostly a celebration). We talked so much. It was fantastic. I met her sister and a college friend of hers and it only occurred to me, as I was driving back home, that they might look at me as the weird internet friend that they needed to vet for their flighty, weird friend or sister.
And, that’s not untrue, I guess. It *is* weird how we connected. But we’re important to each other. Sometimes I doubt it, but through a miracle of chance and through so many long conversations online which I reread sometimes, I know the connection is real.
We mostly correspond through Facebook messenger and that archive of letters is the only reason I’ve not deleted the app. I’m currently in the process of copying all correspondence into a word document. It’s so slow, though!
Thanks again for writing about this, Saeed. It’s nice that someone understands. Xoxo
The one that made me perk up my ears like a dog was this one:
The friend who inspires you to do what you’ve long known you needed to do.
You do it and you tell them.
~~
Years ago, there was a woman I worked with for a while. She left that company and we became friends on social media. We got together for drinks once. I confided in her about my rocky relationship. Fast forward two years later when I sent her a DM to tell her I left the relationship. Since then (2016) I have not seen her in person, but I had her on as a guest for a Twitch talk show I hosted last year, and I sent her my book of poetry when her father recently passed. That love is ours.
I don’t know how to do friendships! Part of it is that I completely burn my life down roughly every five years (Sag energy) but also part of it is that I feel super awkward most of the time. I usually feel like I’m into a friendship more than the other person and then I just kind of quit? But who knows if that’s true or if it’s just my perception.
Also my husband is one of the most amazing friends I’ve ever had. (And now I feel awkward, see?)
Back in the early days of the internet and AOL chat rooms I hit it off with Briget, who has been my Old Buddy Old Pal (OBOP) for 25+ years. We’ve seen each other maybe a dozen times, but we share laughs and Manilow and support through parenthood and marriage.
Likewise, I met Pam through an email chain - this was maybe even before chat rooms - for stepmoms of teens. Whew boy was that a rough time! We reconnected on Facebook and those teens are now incredible adults with kids and good relationships with us stepmoms. I’ve only met her in person once but our friendship is strong.
Online friends are friends. These two are friends that are closer than some irl friends I have now. (Insert brilliant and not too sappy reflection here)
I lived in L.A. for 15 years and I've been back twice but not really seen the people I used to hang out with due to schedules not syncing, etc. A couple of weeks ago one of my two cats was ill so I was absolutely distraught. Not only did I have the support of my current, local friends, but also some friends I've not seen in years from other countries (that I initially met online and then at sci-fi conventions), or whom I've only been online friends with since the LiveJournal days, and the Cali peeps all popped in with support, asking questions, commenting on every post and celebrating when the drama bomb of a void I have for a cat finally started eating again.
The friend you met ten years ago through food blogging. And then you met when you went to SFO, and then I met their husband and newborn when they came to NYC. We've spent maybe a month's worth of time together in ten years but they are family.
The community you built through a Discord server who you bullshit with in the silliest of ways, but they also fundraise for the most marginalized of the community, send birthday and whenever gifts, and feel like home.
The Twitter friend that retweets the WORST of the internet acting up and you want to mute for that alone but they are also hilarious and loving so you stay for the ride, for the ups AND downs.
I'm a part of a large Facebook community that started from a group of girls who went to American school in Okinawa in the late 90s. The community has spread to almost 300 members, you have to be invited by someone in the group so it's a hodgepodge of real life and internet friends. It was created to be a safe space, where we could talk about the things that excite us without worrying about the trolls showing up. It's been incredible, and some of them have been in my life as long as my non-digital friends. It's a beautiful thing.
In very late 2020 one of my online friends (a fellow artist I met through Instagram) gathered three of us together for an online roleplaying game, since we were all craving a game. I didn't know the other two people he'd invited, but in less than a year we've all grown very close. The magic of biweekly games conducted over voicechat and in-jokes and running gags quickly led to a close group of friends. It has the feel of new college friends, intimacy and joy in each other's company that quickly grows due to proximity and repetition. It feels strange to say I've known them for a relatively short period of time, but that shared game made us very important to each other.
Way back in the year 1998, I joined a Yahoo Onelist for what was then my favorite band. (For the kids, Yahoo Onelist is what later became Yahoo Groups, kind of a message board in email form.) Because there's only so much to say about one band, we talked about everything and nothing. That Onelist led to a bunch of real-life friendships, despite the fact that we were all located all over the world. It also introduced me to the person who lived halfway across the country and would eventually become a friend, then boyfriend, then fiance, then husband, then ex-husband, and now, again, a friend. While the relationship didn't end happily ever after, it did change the entire course of my life. I can't imagine who or where I'd be today had I not joined that group.
I will never forget trying to explain to my parents (in 1999) that I was kinda sorta dating someone I'd met on the internet. Again, in 1999. For the next 5 years, until it became more commonplace, my mom would call me excitedly every time she met someone who had also met their significant other on the internet.