This past weekend we had a death in the family after what seemed like a brief illness, and as such things generally do it caused me to do a little introspective thinking. You know, the usual type of “what is life about” and “why do these things happen” thoughts, but also more about where I am in my life. I’m generally happy with the way things have turned out, so it’s not a mid-life crisis situation, but rather an interesting observation about myself.
I have a few friends that I have had for years, a few that I have worked with and remain in-touch with, and a bunch of people I have fallen out of touch with but still consider to be my friends. Interestingly, though, I have very little on-line contact with them aside from emails or occasional IMs.
Then I look at my online activities. I have a small group of people I talk with regularly, maybe a dozen in that group, and have talked to them for nearly ten years. I have met most of them in-person only once ot twice, and some of them I have never met but still consider them to be good friends. Then there is another group of people I met through Metafilter, that are part of a Steamgroup I do the majority of my TF2/L4D gaming with. I also have friends from WoW, old guildmates, current guildmates, and a couple of people I know from work/friends/whatever that happen to play WoW too. On Steam I have something like 111 friends, from various places and some overlap from the above groups. Facebook? A smorgasbord of family, friends, co-workers (former and current), old classmates, and an assortment of other people who fail to fit into most categories.
So taking into consideration the overlaps across my various online personas I have somewhere around 250 “friends”, in quotes because really how many of them would qualify. So following with the morbid topic that began this thought process, I began to wonder how many of them would I be really affected by if they suddenly shuffled off this mortal coil? How many of them would care much more than maybe a quick forum post somewhere? No, not being morose or depressed, just a mental exercise.
What I found was interesting, that among my online-only friends, there are a surprising number of people that I considered closer friends than some of the people I have actually met and know/knew personally. It’s not a knock on those people, it’s just the way I consider the relationships I have made over the years doing things online, especially the number of those people who I knew solely through the playing of computer games with. My closest friends in high school? I only really keep in touch with one of them, and my two closest friends I haven’t spoken to in years. College buddies? Over a decade. People I played WoW with in an old guild a few years ago? I get IMs from on occasion. Bandmates from back when I played actively? Only one I keep in sporadic touch with, not including my oldest and probably best friend.
The point of all this? Not a lot, but I found it interesting the way various friendships and interpersonal relationships have developed over the years. Granted, a number of changes in my life have helped that along, like getting married, having kids, changing careers and going into software development, and not hanging out in bars regularly. But I somehow doubt my case is unique. I’m not sure how I feel about that either. I doubt people my age fit the same mold, but as you go down the age levels, I’m sure it’s more and more common. For good or for ill.
Tags: ramblings4 Comments
4 responses so far ↓
That reminds me – My account got hacked a few months back and the bastard purged everyone on the list, including you. Had that not happened (And/or had I remembered to refriend you before now) that number would’ve been 112.
Aww…I almost made a difference.
Damn – didn’t notice. The hacker actually blocked communications with you – fixed now.
Is there a way to check who you’ve blocked? Now I have to go and see who else is blocked.
You’re not alone on that one… I guess it’s best not to think too much about it. There were always this overlapping between “real” and “virtual”. But not quite as often/strong as nowadays.
I mean, if you start to think about “money” you’ll inevitably uncover it’s “virtual” / “social-constructed” nature.. it’s just colored paper after all, even worst, it’s some binary codes on an unknown computer database.
But well, it took some time until society as a whole took that nature of the currency for granted. And it’s only during high inflation / economic crisis that we come to re-think it’s “real” nature.
Maybe it’s likewise for on-line friendship. The youngsters take it for granted. We have lived a bit on both “realities” and sometimes we tend to re-think the real nature of the friendship.
It seems to me that on-line friendship is friendship “per se”. While some of your “physical” friends will sometimes care for you only because it’s his obligation, the sense of obligation in on-line relationships is weaker.
Anyway, I’m sorry for your loss.
Oh, thank god there are other nerds out there that think our online friendships are somehow stronger and more important to us than the few ‘real’ ones we have. Or maybe we’re both just anti-social hermits who’ve found each other. *cue schmaltzy musak*