Friendship Made Easy

I’ve read a lot about making friends through blogging, and the distinction between online friends and friends “IRL” (in real life). And I never really understood how it worked.

Truth be told, I did not make any friends blogging yet. But, I did start a friendship with a friend of a good friend via the Internet, which I think is pretty cool.

[caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="448"] It's like we were all meant to be friends[/caption]

Kara goes to school with my best friend from home, Erin.  My first interactions with Kara were via facebook where we would both post/comment similar things on Erin’s wall, and by the time I finally met her in person, I knew we would be friends.

Recently, Kara, Erin and I were all on Tumblr together, interacting at the same time.  In response, Kara tweeted, “I feel like we’re all hanging out because we’re all on tumblr at the same time a lot.”



At first, this was funny and I got a good laugh because it was so absurd.  But the more I thought about it, the truer it seemed to be.  It did feel like we were actually all interacting and hanging out when we were interacting on the Internet.

This got me to thinking about how much the Internet changes things.  Yes, it’s a fantastic innovation that has made a billion things so much easier.  But its caused my sense of “hanging out” to be defined simply by any kind of simultaneous interaction.

Which is good and bad.  It makes keeping friendships and relationships a lot easier.  But it also makes me wonder if maybe as a society, we’re slowly losing our need for physical friendships.  I mean, I’m not sure I agree with this, since I really do like being with and interacting with other people, in person.  But its something to really kind of think about.