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I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet gave me was a way to talk to s
by zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet gave me was a way to talk to strangers from around the world and make friends with people who I would have never had a chance to interact with in person. In my 20s, it lead to real life friendships with people I had met online, which is really cool. I have used Couch Surfing to make friends in places I was traveling through. Lived in Australia for a while with a group of friends I met online.
- stavros 2y ago20 years later, some of my closest friends are those I met in 97 in a MUD. I have other friends, of course, but it's notable that friendships have endured entirely online for twenty years. Some of those friends I've talked to every day, or every few days, for decades, but I've only seen once or twice IRL.
- HPsquared 2y agoOnline friendships can be more durable than in-person ones. They aren't affected by physical changes and moves.
- stavros 2y agoYeah, they kind of start in the worst failure mode a friendship can have.
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- therein 2y agoI played non-Steam CS in early 2000s and made friends there in a foreign country. Years later added to Steam, and continued staying in close contact. A decade later we both ended up at the West Coast and still chat daily to this day. We even worked on projects and started some companies along the way.
- amatecha 2y agoHell yeah, I still chat regularly with a couple friends I met online in like 1999. One of them I talk with almost daily. Surprisingly the whole "extremely online" approach has meant some really solid long-lasting connections. :)
- matsemann 2y agoI also grew up in a rural town, in Norway. I think internet made me more of a "world citizen", empathic to all kinds of people, than I would have been without. A small town can be quite unwelcome to those not like us. But I wonder if some of that is lost now to those being "raised on the internet"? That things are too big. There were small forums, behave, as you know the avatars of everyone and they become your friends in a way. But on reddit, everyone is just faceless, I will never chat with the same person there again. So no sense of community, don't learn to feel empathy for others in the same way. I also wonder how my choice of games affected this. Playing WoW, you had to behave, get friends, join a guild, and spent time with those. I got friends I've visited in other countries, and learned much about life elsewhere through this. But my irl friends playing FPS shooting games on xbox live? Mostly swearing and trash talk, never to see the players again after getting a new random pairing.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoGood point. I also made friends on an RPG, Phantasy Star Online, and was active on a fan board. The message boards I posted on were in the thousands of users, so everyone knew everyone and I didn't want a poor reputation.
- photonthug 2y ago> things are too big Yes. Leaving a small town IRL to visit a more appropriate small digital town where people share interests but might be from anywhere was exactly what everyone I knew on early internet bbs/irc/mud was doing, basically. Presumably if you were in a larger city, you could already find people IRL with your interests somehow, even if the interests were obscure. Identity was anonymous but persistent and it was still a small town, so you couldn’t just be an ass all the time or you’d be ostracized.