Online: Friends or Fiends?
The Internet is a great place to find people with the same interests as you. This is a great building block for making good, longlasting friends. However, can friends be made online? Can you really call that person a friend without once seeing their face with your own eyes?
Let me start with this simple question. What is a friend? Websters Dictionary defines friend as 'A person you know well and regard with affection and trust'. From this someone could say that their online friends are true friends. However, can you have trust online? Can you truly trust someone you only know through a glowing computer screen?
Moreover, many people would say that you don't know this person. Many people live separate lives online, it becomes an escape from reality. Therefore, they act way differently then they would offline because they can get away with it. The sheer anonymity of the Internet lets you be whatever you like, a sexy stud, the antihero thug, whatever. Perhaps I am just a quiet girl that sits in the corner at school, but online I'm the loud, outgoing, random crazy girl of the chatroom, a complete polar opposite from my real life personality. I could even have different personas online. Maybe in one chatroom, I'm a teen from France, in another I could be half Japanese and work in a stripper club or something. Maybe I'm the daughter of Obama, or a descendant of Hitler. You never know. I could lie and say I live in a mansion, I have lots of money, a horse. Those are rather difficult things to believe, but you get the point. Small white lies are easy to tell online, and unless it's ridiculous, no one's going to question.
We can turn that right around though, and say that person you know through the screen is the real them. Some cannot be their real selves and show it through without society busting down on them, telling them what to do and who to be. Online there isn't that pressure, you can be who you are without society there to tell you it's wrong. On the Internet, there is no shortage of different people, and whatever you believe, there is sure to be many, many sites about it. Think of the otherkin community for a minute. If someone were to declare they believed they were an animal in their past life, everyone would shun them, call them names, etc. Online, one doesn't have to worry about the rejection.
After trust, there comes affection. It's difficult to tell whether or not you actually feel for someone on the Internet. When you read through a screen, your feelings are not real, they are simulated, all in your mind. You can say you love someone online, but really, isn't it only a simulation of love? An illusion?
Evenso, look at all the people who have found love through the net. Many of them have met up offline and still feel the same way they did before, even without the simulation of feelings behind the screen. They are proof that sometimes you can find true friends online. They are difficult to come by, but sometimes there are true people online.
