Online Friends Are Real Friends

PeterStuer•3 minutes 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.

evaneykelen•about 1 hour 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.

en3r0•about 1 hour 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.

MomsAVoxell•40 minutes 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.

an0malous•about 1 hour 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.

220hertz•9 minutes 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.

JumpinJack_Cash•24 minutes 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

win311fwg•13 minutes 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.

Online Friends Are Real Friends

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Discussion (8 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews