5 ms·

Online Friends Are Real Friends

• an0malous 3mo ago
  How do you make online friends? I’ve been on Reddit for many years and have rarely even DM’ed anyone. I’ve also tried apps like Boo but the conversations always fizzle out.
  • JumpinJack_Cash 3mo ago
    You have to join a more restrict community such as the FIFA PRO Clubs or the Rainbow Six teams or whatever is restrict and gaming thing . The general chatter/board where a plethora of people hangout such as reddit won't get you anywhere just like real life
  • 220hertz 3mo ago
    Discord's not a bad way if there's a shared interest. I met some great people on a server dedicated to a hockey team. We'd all watch the game and blather away in chat. You get to know them after a while.
  • xcf_seetan 3mo ago
    Mostly on technologies that enables people talking. My first online friends, were from using IRC; I even made local friends, I would never without using the online way. Then I made friends using simple emails to far away people. Next I remember I did a lot of friends using SecondLife, were i found out about "mein sonnenshein", a virtual friend i virtually married 4 times and divorce four times also (it was very cheap like 10 cents to marry and 25 to divorce, lol) and a lot of other good friends; last one i got it in a MMORPG where i saw a "beautiful" elf warrior and started talking to her, and it results she spoke the same language and were in another continent. There is been a lot of time over, but i still make contact with some of them. I would dare to say that the virtual friends were as good as the real ones, because in the end we are all humans and connected with language, and resonate in many ways.
  • TFNA 3mo ago
    Reddit hasn't really facilitated friendships (let alone the kind leading to real-life meetups) since the 2018 redesign at least; even before that the site was remarkably impersonal compared to any old-school forum.
  • jacobgkau 2mo ago
    For me, it was a Twitch chat community. It started with everyone showing up the same time every week to watch a couple of people who streamed together. They eventually started a Discord server when Discord became available (which decreased the closeness of the actual Twitch chat community in some ways by making it all more asynchronous, imo, but did also solidify the community beyond Twitch in other ways). I've been to several meetups where I met many of those people, and have also separately met the two streamers a couple of times as well. I consider a number of them "online friends" to a varying degree. I think something like Reddit would be unlikely to lead to this sort of thing, unless you're regularly participating in a small enough subreddit in a consistent/repetitive manner so as to recognize and be recognized by others (for example, I once helped run a little fanfic book club in a show's subreddit, and if that had gone on for longer, then I could see myself having gotten to know the other co-organizers a little better). The key is probably to have some shared interest to bring you to the same place, but also an environment that's flexible enough to sometimes talk about things outside of the main interest. Older forums that would have an off-topic board were probably better about this than Reddit, since Reddit tends to segregate discussion about different topics into different places (with different people).
  • ZeWaka 2mo ago
    Shared interests on small chat platforms. Discords for a niche subject replaced the old IRC channels. Twitch chats for small-medium streamers also work similarly (which was based on IRC!)
    • bluefirebrand 2mo ago
      I find that niche Discords are so much harder to find and join than niche IRC channels used to be
  • jerojero 2mo ago
    Now a days I'd say discord is the best. I've been running my server for about 6 years already, and it's a pretty strong community of around 20 or so people. Sometimes we get new people, not everyone is a perfect fit and they might stay for a few weeks before leaving. Some have left after a few years, some leave and come back; others come every so many months to chat for a day or two before going away. There's many different types of relationships that can be formed in places like that. I think what's most important is that there needs to be something you all share for it to work. Maybe it's anime, sports, whatever (in my particular case, it's an LGBT server). I've already met around 5-6 people from this server IRL, and so far it's always been a great time.
  • Insanity 2mo ago
    Back in the good 'old' days, by playing repeatedly on the same server. On many games I've played (JK, UT, COD1-4), the servers just turned into giant chat rooms after 9pm or so. You play some games, chat a bit, then hang out on TeamSpeak. I have no idea how people do it nowadays, gaming seems to have lost that social touch (at least to me).
  • kylehotchkiss 2mo ago
    Instagram, actually. People try to do introduction posts in their niches (and everybody has niches) and I’ve made durable online friendships with them.
  • weezing 2mo ago
    Mostly online games, forums (regular ones, not shitholes like reddit), discord servers dedicated to some specific hobbies. I met my wife on a local imageboard from my country.
• en3r0 3mo ago
  Here's the problem with online relationships, you can pick them up and drop them whenever you like. You can do that in real life to a degree, but sometimes you are forced to confront friends in real life when you don't want to. A real friend requires surviving a degree of confrontation.
  • ASalazarMX 3mo ago
    This is the crucial difference. The online abstraction facilitates behaviors that are destructive to friendship, like ghosting, blocking, or even banning if you have admin powers in their meeting place. Also, since real life is abstracted online, small issues tend to become dramatic because. It takes courage, and some recklessness, to open yourself to a total stranger that might not even be what they claim to be. For us who saw the initial anonymous wild west of the Web, it's difficult to trust people online. It might be different with younger generations that grew up with having their real identity open in several mainstream places.
  • yborg 2mo ago
    The OP article talks about people met online who they subsequently met and hung out with in person. To me, this is now an meatspace friendship, so yeah, it's "real". Pure online relationships where you have never met or seen the other person are in my experience an order of magnitude less "real". As you note, there's no 'skin in the game' and ghosting a relationship is zero effort and likely zero consequences, and when everyone knows this is the case the relationships are equally less consequential.
  • dyauspitr 2mo ago
    I agree. Without seeing someone regularly in person or knowing their body language, mannerisms, quirks etc., I find the relationship to be much more disposable. There are people I was friends with in college that I only keep up with over text and those relationships are much more frail than they used to be.
  • HDBaseT 2mo ago
    Maybe in isolation, although in most competitive video game spaces (which is where I've met majority of my "online friends") a disagreement between two parties tend to get resolve because it disrupts the entire dynamic. It is increasingly difficult to just "drop" someone when you friends with their IRL friends, which is also pretty common. You'll play a game and meet someone, they'll meet you and invite their friend to all queue up.
• evaneykelen 3mo ago
  My son made online friends when he was 14, playing games together with them on Steam. When he is playing a game with them, I often hear him roar with laughter, but they can also be quite serious and talk about life and school. Last month, we took him to Wrocław to meet them, and it was marvelous. My wife and I got to know the parents of these boys (16-17 yo now), had dinner together, and we separated as friends. My son had a blast that week finally meeting them in person.
  • tehlike 2mo ago
    As an introvert, my best friends I still talk to today are online friends. We met a few times when I was teenager, but then we moved different places. Online communication still goes on. He's a lucky guy that has parents that understand him.
  • sznio 2mo ago
    I've been in a similar position 10 years ago when I was 16. I wanted to meet a bunch of friends from Arma 3, in Wrocław as well. My parents didn't allow me to go. Years later I still hate them for it. I make sure they never know when I leave town now, since I'm not really in the mood to listen to my mom enumerating every way something bad can happen to me. Let your fucking kid go. Especially when the kid isn't as retarded as you.
• MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
  Had plenty of online friends come and go. What I found is that it usually took online relationships longer to get to know each other in some ways, and quicker in other ways. It was no fun realizing after a few IRL visits that we really just didn't like each other unless careful email communications was our primary means of interaction. With some folks the time it takes to write an email is all the filter is needed. Sometimes, though, it only takes 5 minutes IRL to realize that you only like the persons email - not the person, themselves.
  • chambers 2mo ago
    > Sometimes, though, it only takes 5 minutes IRL to realize that you only like the persons email - not the person, themselves. A great point that’s also true in reverse.
  • shuwix 2mo ago
    All online relationships are only for the good times. You really need a friend in bad times, and then you'll find out who is really a friend.
    • t-writescode 2mo ago
      And much of the time, that friend is the online friend.
• win311fwg 3mo ago
  > This will be the sixth time that at least one of us has traveled to hang out with the other. Are these really online friends if you are also recognizing them as real-life humans that exist in the same world you do and treat them like you would any other friend? Aside from maybe the Amish (and even that's questionable if you pay close enough attention to what they are hiding), there is almost nobody who doesn't communicate with friends using electronic devices. That is not a unique property. "Online friend" only seems like a useful distinction if you truly think of them as a some kind of nebulous chat entity that comes to you via a connected device, where specific implementation details be it human, AI, space alien, or magical fairy doesn't play into the experience. Where if you eventually found out that it was actually ChatGPT on the other end you wouldn't be disappointed.
  • jerlam 3mo ago
    The definitions seem kind of arbitrary, online friend seems to mean either: 1. friend who you primarily communicate online 2. friend where initial contact was made online Option 1 seems odd, especially for friends who have moved. Are they reclassified as "online friend"? Option 2 represents only a single moment in time and seems to have little bearing on everything past that initial contact. Also some people seem to classify "real friend" as "friend that I physically see on a regular basis".
    • jacobgkau 2mo ago
      > Option 2 represents only a single moment in time and seems to have little bearing on everything past that initial contact. It has bearing indefinitely because it means you likely need to travel in order to interact offline. Friends who've moved might or might not eventually demote to "online friend" status, in a similar way to how they might or might not demote to "used to be friends" status, I suppose.
  • jacobgkau 2mo ago
    I think having to travel (and doing it) in order to see people you initially met online is different from knowing people in your physical area and choosing to sometimes interact online instead.
• PeterStuer 3mo ago
  Hard disagree. Online friends are easy to ditch. Real life friends are around wether you like it or not. That fact alone has huge repercussions.
  • TFNA 3mo ago
    Real-life friends are ditching each other commonly these days, because the Block function on Whatsapp (or whatever app they use to communicate) seems so convenient and consequence-free.
    • PeterStuer 3mo ago
      Maybe I'm old school, but if you can erase someone from your life because you block them on an app, this probably was not 'real-life'?
      • TFNA 3mo ago
        In 2026, the way that friends who don't see each other at work/school arrange to meet and maintain that friendship, is via WhatsApp or the local equivalent.
      • bluefirebrand 2mo ago
        How is that really any different than screening their phone calls or ignoring them if they come to the door?
        • Jtarii 2mo ago
          There are very few people that are schizoid enough to intentionally ignore a friend who comes to their door.
          • bluefirebrand 2mo ago
            There are very few people that are schizoid enough to ignore someone saying "hey we're not friends anymore, don't contact me again" and then show up at their house
• nazgulsenpai 3mo ago
  I work fulltime and have 2 kids still at home by myself. I made my two best friends on MMORPGs, one on FFXIV almost 10 years ago now, and one in Black Desert just talking about black metal bands we both liked in server chat. I have acquaintances IRL, mostly from work. But my actual friends are people who I've never met face-to-face.
• opengrass 3mo ago
  Online friends are as real as sending racy photos then getting extorted for Google Play cards.
• 0xDEAFBEAD 2mo ago
  For online friendship to really work, we need to solve the problem of pig-butchering scammers (scammers who "make friends with you" and eventually get you to give them money somehow, e.g. by depositing money in a "crypto trading platform", sending money for a "health crisis", etc.) This problem will only get worse with conversational AI agents/deepfakes/etc. For every human seeking genuine friendship there might be 100 AI agent scammers.
  • paul7986 2mo ago
    Use apps like Snapchat to ensure they are who they say they are (if they refuse to verify via snap or insta's snap feature don't bother with them). If they are not local delete them immediately if they ever ask for money or give a sob story, no matter how long you've been chatting! Protect yourself and don't be a fool as the Internet can be amazing on one side (have many chat buds on Snap and other apps who have verified themselves too and never asked for money) and horrible on the other side(i dont give any others a chance).
    • andrepd 2mo ago
      What do you mean snap feature? Can you explain?
      • HDBaseT 2mo ago
        I assume he means sending images, in real time taken from the built-in snapchat camera. You cannot "snap" someone without actually snapping a picture. You cannot for example generate some AI image or photoshop something and send it, as it will appear as an attachment, instead of a snap.
      • paul7986 2mo ago
        Snapchat is app where you send live photos directly from your phone's camera. When you snap someone its a non-filtered picture you just took from your phone's camera (its how you look at that present moment) that you send to your contact and they will snap you back or vice versa. Great way to ensure neither are catfishing or are a scammer as scammer always use fake or AI pics.
• apparent 2mo ago
  There are a couple people I've met on HN, then emailed with, then met IRL. There are also some people I've known IRL, who then saw my stuff on HN and reconnected with me IRL. The former is neat, but the latter is even better.
  • tayo42 2mo ago
    I am the complete opposite. I like my pseudo-anonymity (I figured with enough effort some one could figure out who I am) and the freedom to be an idiot or have a bad day online that comes with that.
• agumonkey 2mo ago
  anybody got into the online to IRL issue where you pictured the person differently and it didn't survive the meeting ?
  • Jtarii 2mo ago
    Meeting an online friend IRL without ever having seen a photo of them is odd.
    • agumonkey 2mo ago
      photos don't help much, actually it would be more about not hearing them before, but i guess my age is showing, in the 2020s everybody has voice chats regularly i guess. but before i was uncomfortable hearing and seeing the body language of someone. it's quite immature but it's something that happens. and beyond that, a relationship online may not be the same as in person.. when everyone has its own space and can come and go at any time, it's free-er
    • spaqin 2mo ago
      I'd say that sending your photo to a someone online is even weirder. If you're friends based on hobbies, interests, then their appearance (assuming decent hygiene ofc) shouldn't matter that much. From numerous times I've met online friends, I might've seen their photo few times at most?
• kator 2mo ago
  I met my wife playing Star Wars Galaxies, online. She was member #4 in the guild I ran, The Trade Federation on Flurry, one of a whole crew of people I'd never met in my life. It was a very interesting way to meet, to get to know a person with zero real physical input, no pics (we're too old for that stuff), and we talked on and on about philosophy, life, kids, learning, loving, challenges. For a good while it was just the words, no idea what the other looked like or how old, none of the things you'd normally sort people on before you decide they're worth your time. The reality is, with no face and no resume in the way, all you've got is the actual person, what they laugh at and how they handle an idea they don't agree with. And in an MMO you see even more, how they solve problems, do quests, handle loot, and deal with moving through the game. That turned out to be the part that actually matters, and it's usually the last thing you learn about someone you met in person, not the first. At some point we made the leap; she was in Tennessee and I was in California, so meeting in person was a very big deal. I flew out and drove deep into Tennessee, and we met for the first time in a Food City parking lot. It was amazing, we talked for hours. As they say, "and the rest is history." We married and have been together for 20 years. Meeting her, and a whole crew of people I never met in person but still call friends, is the primary reason I joined the team trying to keep SWG alive [1]. We both still have fond memories of our time together in game, and now in real life. So when someone tells me online friends aren't real friends, I just smile, because I married mine. And yes, I'm married to a gamer chick, and it's amazing! And all these years later, she's still my friend too. :) [1] https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216279 https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216279
  • mylasttour 2mo ago
    This felt incredibly warm to read, thank you for sharing.
  • ehnto 2mo ago
    I met so many awesome people in SWG. It did a really great job of fostering social interactions in a real way, not just transactional menu button presses. To get a lot of things done in the economy and the different aspects of the community you had to talk to people. You were also part of a persistent universe, so you could frequent the same spots and end up bumping into people. Just those two aspects I believe are where online games have gone so wrong, and it's an easy fix. Persistent servers instead of matchmaking, and don't make every little interaction a gamified polished system. Leave some room for the chatbox/voice comms to be relevant for getting stuff done.
• NoMoreNicksLeft 2mo ago
  Rehab friends are real friends, but a person shouldn't ever want to experience the circumstances necessary to have rehab friends.
• brailsafe 2mo ago
  I think a more salient point is made here: > "In addition, there's generally a lower chance that the friendship develops out of convenience alone. Don't get me wrong, many in-person friendships are born this way and can turn into the most meaningful lifelong connections." I don't have any "online friends" at the moment, but if I did, I'd have met them in the online equivalent of my city, but not at work and not next door, not in highschool. On the extreme end of convenience, you have precarious, proximity-oriented, passive, almost lazy social activity; you meet the friends at work, and you might invite them to drive out to your bbq in the burbs where you've also invited the people next door and across the lane. On the extreme other end you have friends that occur despite every communication and proximity challenge being thrown in your way. Great friends come from mutual investment despite some level of inconvenience you both can tolerate, and it's my opinion that if the seeds of the friendship are planted only in the shallow soil of easy access, then the plant won't bear much fruit, and may be ripped out of the ground as soon a layoff rolls around. I don't online friends as meaningfully distinct from the requirements of any other robust type of friendship. They're just formed in the ephemeral online equivalent of a cosmopolitan city. I have strong friendships in different pockets pf the city for different reasons in different circles, and don't think they'd all work well together in the same room. Some I climb mountains with, some I watch movies with, some I play video games with. Online acquaintances meanwhile, are formed in one discrete silo of interaction and don't stretch beyond it, much like your nextdoor neighbor or coworker.
• tomwheeler 2mo ago
  I once read about a father who told his daughter, "real friends are people who care how your life ends up." I think that's a pretty good definition to go by.
  • acchow 2mo ago
    I agree with this wholeheartedly. Embracing this change in what you value in relationships is a key part of growing up. The shift from playing together (childhood) to having each others' backs (adolescence, college, 20s) to building up each others' lives (adulthood). Your true friends have bigger dreams for you than you have for yourself.
    • Dependance 2mo ago
      "Your true friends have bigger dreams for you than you have for yourself." I like yours even more !
    • tomwheeler 2mo ago
      This is really beautiful. It's wisdom that seems so clear at my current stage of life, but wasn't obvious to me at age 15 or even 25.
• socketcluster 2mo ago
  I have 3 long term online friends which I've kept in touch with for over a decade but I never met them offline (only 2 I met over video chat).
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• Monarch909 2mo ago
  During covid I made a lot more friends and happened to interact people with all different backgrounds, and ngl this helped me alot in many ways
• mihaic 2mo ago
  I'm sorry, but this is like saying "online sex is real sex". I'm sure some people can get the same stimulation, but it very much isn't the same. Humans need other humans, in flesh and blood in front of them. Bonding needs a physical presence. That's the only way our social processes have evolved. Given the sociability crisis and how having online friends can still have benefits, it's fine to paint them as something good, but they shouldn't be mistaken for the real thing, and this sort of ideas hide away our unnatural modern lifestyle.
  • neuroticnews25 2mo ago
    I've had flesh and blood humans in front of me and it didn't feel good, maybe you're projecting.
    • mihaic 2mo ago
      Maybe I'm projecting a preference for something that humans have always done. But are you sure you're not trying to normalize your own unnatural preference?
• dabbledash 2mo ago
  They used to be real friends. At this point, if you only know someone online, they might not even be a someone let alone a friend.
• sznio 2mo ago
  for me, the non-committal nature of online friends is nice. the best online friends are the people I've known for 15 years, whom I just message two/three times a year for a deep conversation. IRL friends have too much IRL mess of scheduling, meeting up, solving the issue that friend A really dislikes friend B now yet you need to fit them at one party.
• neuroticnews25 2mo ago
  With my online friends there's a shared understanding that we'll most likely never meet IRL and probably wouldn't even like each other. It's like mutual parasociality, lol.
• a2fz 2mo ago
  A counterpoint is that people - especially young people - who spend enough time on the internet to be willing to develop online friendships tend to be people who lack a proper irl social life, and (from my own personal experience) it is painfully obvious when you meet someone in real life who has grown up socialising primarily with people on Twitter and in Discord servers vs people who've had a more healthy balance. Despite my best efforts to make it work, it's quite easy for me to see the contrast between people I've met from the internet and people who originated irl. The terminally-online people tend to have much higher rates of mental illness or be uncomfortably weird to be around. On the bright side, I've found this to be less true when socialising with people who I've met through those internet friends. Additionally, internet friendships are more viable the less interesting and wholesome your life actually is. You can't start a band together. You can't share opinions on the taste of a meal unless it's from a multinational fast food chain. You can't walk through a forest together. You can't go on a bicycle ride on the trail near your house and share an equal level of genuine appreciation for how beautiful the nature looks this time of year, with full sensory experience. (Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH3D1cpm6do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH3D1cpm6do) Sure, the internet could be a good tool to initially find people (if you're lucky enough to not experience the issues described my first two paragraphs), but for me the aim should be to transition to an in-person relationship as quickly as possible. I don't want my friendships to just be text on a screen, where every thought I express to them is monitored by the digital surveillance panopticon, where they could disappear and be replaced with ChatGPT and I wouldn't know the difference, where my friendship with them is on-hold if their house loses internet for a week and their cell phone reception isn't good enough to make video calls, where I can't give them a hug or offer to tidy their house with them or make any tangible, physical positive impact on their life.
  • deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
• tobadzistsini 2mo ago
  Is this reddit or hn?
• iamthejuan 2mo ago
  I have a bestfriend who I met on mIRC, we are still bestfriends after 26 years later.
• mock-possum 2mo ago
  I’ve never had online friends, actually. Never. I’ve been alive 40 years and I’ve never had an online friend. There have been people I’ve met online, then go to know and befriend offline. There are friends offline, who I’ve kept in touch with online. But there is nobody I know solely online that I would consider a friend, and it would take a lot to change that. IRL is simply a different thing altogether for me. It’s hard to imagine making a ‘real’ friend without try at IRL interaction.
• S_Bear 2mo ago
  My wife's friends from her Minecraft server joined us on vacation the past few years. We have multiple people from all over the US and Canada meet us where we're going and we go do touristy stuff together.