Recently, I was talking to a woman I met several years ago at RWA. I don’t remember who introduced us or how we became friends, but even though we rarely see each other, even though on the surface we have little enough in common beyond being writers, we follow each other on Twitter and Facebook and chat now and then about writing things and regular life stuff. On Twitter, in Direct Messages, I said to her that I was really glad we were friends.
It was a strange moment because not too long before that, there had been one of those incredibly unhealthy things that happens in the publishing world in which the whole definition of “friendship” came into question. What makes someone your “friend?” How much communication, how many secrets do you have to share? What are the limits on friendship? How much can a “friend” go against your ethical code before you no longer consider yourselves friends? Is it possible that I am your friend, but you are not mine?
I’ve made some of my closest friends online. I started working for AOL in 1993, when I was living a very isolated life in a tiny town where I had no friends. In those days people were writing and talking about “Internet Addiction,” but most of the people I knew who spent hours and hours online weren’t addicted to “the Internet,” they were addicted to the relationships they found there. Depressives, insomniacs like me, we found support systems and communities of people who understood us as no one in our everyday lives did.
Even today, I am friends with the people I met on the night shift at AOL more than twenty years ago. I don’t see them often, but we are absolutely friends. In 2007 when I was really sick and needed someone to stay with me, one of my AOL friends lived with me for several months since he was on disability. Yes, when you meet your friends digitally, you can put your trust in the wrong people. But that can happen when you meet them in person, too. Still, friendship is a bit like porn—hard to define, but you know it when you feel it.
In all the years since I started at AOL, the Internet has become more and more social. And I, well, I have gotten less so. I moved from jobs where I dealt with the public to jobs where I see almost no one. I am a writer in the world of publishing which, as I discussed with someone on Twitter just yesterday, is an extremely unhealthy ecosystem. My friendships develop in that world, the world where insane levels of arrogance are set off by the deepest insecurity and even self-loathing, where sometimes it seems that the “happy medium” does not, cannot, exist. I have found good friends in the writing and publishing communities, people that I met in person. But I have met more of them online.
In a discussion online about the most recent brouhaha, someone told me that “exchanging a few emails and direct messages doesn’t make you friends. Friends are people you show pictures of your children to.” I left it alone because I knew we were not going to agree, but it raised a question for me. I don’t have kids. Although I am private and don’t share pictures of my lunch on Facebook, I don’t have secrets in the way most people think of them. What would I share with a “friend” that I do not share with the public?
I would contend that friendship is defined not by the quantity of communication but rather the quality. My conversations with friends go deeper, last longer. Which means that, indeed, that you can give your friendship to someone who is not your friend. You can believe that someone is your friend because you communicate freely and openly with them on the assumption that they are doing the same with you. The things they are hiding are things you don’t think to ask about because you don’t notice the absence. And yes, the Internet makes this easier. But liars and cheaters were around before the Internet, and they’ll be here when our computers crumble into dust.
Friendship, however, lasts forever.
I like to think we’re friends 🙂
Of course we are. If you’ve stayed at my house, you’re my friend 😀
I’ve been having and treasuring digital friendships for almost as long as you. Some of those friends I’ve managed to see in person, others not. But the experiences I’ve had with those I’ve met in person have reinforced for me the idea that you can build real friendships digitally. And almost all friendships now have a digital element to them even if you see each other in person every week.
I think friendships imbalances or misreads happen no matter how the relationship started. 2 years ago I lost a person I considered a very close friend, she had travelled with me, we watched each other’s kids, we texted fun stuff to each other, went out for drinks and movies, and we took care of each other when we were sick. But her life started changing, she got different work hours and slowly we entered a period of her slowly distancing herself. She still texted and interacted digitally but stopped being “present” during our weekly interactions. I even hung on to the friendship when she very clearly dumped our other mutual friend. It was painfully slow, and it raised the same sort of questions, about how two-sided it had ever been. I think friendships are just tricky. Some people abuse them others treasure them, and I’ve absolutely been more of a friend to someone than they were to me online and offline, and for the most part I don’t regret it.
I’m looking forward to RWA, and meeting some of my Rom Twitter friends offline, even if I always get a little nervous…
Oh, I didn’t know you were going to RWA, Ana! We must meet up! 🙂
Yay! I too am excited to hear Ana will be there. July will be fun.
Yes, let’s do that. I am planning on being there the whole time, starting with Librarian’s Day.
Agree wholeheartedly. I, too, find “digital friendships” fulfilling.
Like you, I make some incredibly close friends online and have treasured those friendships. Even though we because very close online, there was also a part of me that held back until I met them in person. That seemed to solidify what I knew about them already and I was rarely wrong. I’m a very social person and have a lot of people I consider friends. There are very few that I actually share some of my deepest feelings/concerns. I’m not sure what you call that secondary level of friendship that takes you beyond social.
I’m not sure, either, Lydia. People talk about “BFF”s, but if you were really “best friends forever,” you’d only have one…that’s sort of the nature of a BFF, right? So what’s between just “friends” and “BFF?”
Well, I think “BFF” is a title I would give to a few people in my life. Unfortunately, they live 50-2,000 miles away and my primary form of communication is on social media. Still, it works and I think we know should we each other in person, it would happen.
(I clearly need to quit typing on my iPad so my posts make sense.)
Some of my dearest friends are people I met online. Some I’ve been fortunate enough to meet in real but whether I have or haven’t they are still friends. The strength of the friendship varies but that’s true with off-line friends too.
I missed the brouhaha but online friendships are just as real, or weak, as any real-life ones. It’s expectations, boundaries, shared experiences that matter.
I’m like Lydia. I’ve developed some close on-line friends, but it’s unlikely I would invite them to stay in my home before I’ve actually met them face to face at least once or twice. As for sharing deepest secrets, that’s still reserved for a select few, whether on-line or in person. I sometimes think the Internet has dulled people’s senses of what’s appropriate to share and what isn’t. Sort of like the state of publishing at the moment. Just because you can publish a book any time you want doesn’t mean you should. 🙂
I can honestly say we are friends because we met via email FIRST, then in person at the PYHIAB Conf, and are now connected and chatting via social media. We have a mix of social interaction mediums. Also, I can now count myself among your trusted beta readers (once you send me that delicious book, of course). I have a friend I met in middle school and considered a frenemy in high school. We lost touch when I went away to college, but we reconnected on Facebook. She is now one of my most trusted friends. I even dedicated my first published book to her! We never talk on the phone, we haven’t SEEN each other since 1999, but we are still “close” friends because we put in the effort to communicate on a level higher than cheesy emojis and annoying status ads for Jamberry.
Absolutely. And, in fact, my first book was dedicated to one of my closest friends…who I met online when both of us worked for AOL.