[REPOST] 'Is it pointless to make friends?'

RYOUKI

survive the world.
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    I was looking back to the the PotW and stumbled upon an old thread of mine which had won PotW. (oh my god, I was such a n00b back then.. and now.)

    I'm pretty sure this thread isn't qualified for the PotW again, but I really wanted to hear your thoughts.

    I'll just cut to the chase: Do you think it's worth having PC friends? Or in general, having internet friends?

    Due to Globalization, the world is connected and I'm sure you all know that some of your best friends in PC live halfway across the globe from yours. And there comes the time when you're far to busy with life to log in to PC and move on, making the relationship you forged with your PC friends just a distant memory. So tell me, in your opinion, is it worth making friends on the internet or not? I mean, there comes a time when you're going to move on, oh wait, i'm repeating myself...

    So yeah, Do you think it's pointless to make friends in the internet?
     
    Proximity to others is inherently good for people; it's instinctual and cannot be replaced by emoticons and long messages. But for those who don't socialize well or have other issues, online friends may be their only perceived choice.

    However, when online friends are augmented with real friends and human contact, it's practically ideal - with online friends your pool of extractable worldviews, experiences, and philosophies is greatly enlarged. I've met many, many vastly interesting people with fantastic ideas from all corners of the internet who I would likely never randomly stumble across.

    ETA: while waiting for this to post, I realized where my view came from: I have sufficient friends and social interaction IRL, so I've never been concerned with being overly chummy online, because that need is fulfilled. Where my friends sometimes fail is in creative and intelligent ideas & conversations, which is where I turn online for fulfillment. Knowhattamean?
     
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    I don't think it's pointless to have Internet friends because you have other people to talk to if your RL friends aren't around.
     
    There are limits to online friends.

    Before I started college, I had friends in high school, but no one that I hung out with outside of school. When I was done with school, I would go back to my room, get on an MMO, get on a forum, skype, MSN, and talk to all my online friends. I used them as an escape, because it's easy for me to make online friends. Much easier than trying to make myself brave enough to invite people to hang out or make new friends irl. People would invite me to do something and I would make up an excuse so I could lay in bed on Skype with people I only knew online.

    When I got to college, I pretty much immediately stopped playing MMOs, and made some really good rl friends. Because of that, I lost a lot of my online friends because we talked far less. I didn't have much of a problem with it; the ones I cared about most kept in contact, the ones that I wasn't as close to didn't.

    tl;dr: Don't let online friends keep you from making real friends.

    @Meowth: You must have exceedingly high standards. o_O I've been to schools that are probably far worse than your school, and 9 different non-college schools in my life, and have always been able to find at least one person that's worth befriending.
     
    Do you think it's worth having PC friends? Or in general, having internet friends?
    It's worth having friends in general, even if they are internet friends or not.
    I just see them as friends or even as close as a family member.

    So yeah, Do you think it's pointless to make friends in the internet?
    No, not at all.
     
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    Friends are tricky territory. You can't get them too close or else you might find yourself betrayed (like I did last year) but a really good friend is one that can always make you feel better. I think its worth having friends even if some people may try to manipulate you.

    "Friend" Lists are more like contact lists in my opinion though. I have some online friends though that I'm fairly close with, but they're not every single person on my "Friend" lists like here on PC or Facebook. I still am wary of them though, like I wouldn't want to actually meet most of them just because I don't know how they would act in the real world.
     
    I'm all for Internet friends, though they shouldn't replace offline friends.

    Just because we can't actually go out to the movies or anything doesn't mean we can't have empathy and understanding, which is really what good friendship is all about to me. Friends do more than just hang out, they expand my horizons, support me, and overall make a positive difference in my life. Why say no to something like that just because we only have text and Skype?

    Making friends in say... Poland and Israel, has really changed my outlook on a lot of things. I can't exactly meet these guys IRL.
     
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    Of course it's not pointless to make friends online. While this has not happened to me personally, a really strong online friendship can develop into a healthy offline one. I do know of a few people who have started a real relationship - and one marriage! ZOMG! - due to the connections they've made on the internet.

    Even if it doesn't get to that stage, friends made online will, unless you move in very closed circles, probably offer refreshingly different perspectives on life, the universe and everything. And that's good in my book. Variety is the spice of life after all... well, that and garam masala!
     
    There's nothing wrong with having online friends. Hell, I have better friends online, than I do irl, for the most part. It's great to get a look at people from different walks of life, I've improved culturally from the conversations that I've had with others. So yeah, other than the "Everyone online is out to get you" moniker, there's not many cons to having friends online.
     
    Having online friends is pretty fun, so I don't see it as being pointless. Sometimes they can be more fun than your IRL friends xDD
     
    It's nice.

    You can meet some good people on the 'net, but the conversations are usually shallow, and you can often pick out the ********. With some people I just get bitter with them because they claim extremely intersting things happen to them, like being dragged off by girls and stripped into new clothes. The person I referenced, by the way, was on the staff of the Fakemon site 'Pokemon Factory'. He constantly begged for attention by telling others he would commit suicide over the smallest things, and fed my trolling there by saying I was an emotionally stunted attention-seeker, and he posted a nice little anti-trolling speech that was so offensive to others (except the person who it was meant for, aka moi) that he thought he was going to get banned; so I shifted responsibility for it onto myself as a final mean-spirited joke before getting kicked off. Pretty much, I got banned by an overpowered, manipulative emo who saw too much of himself in me. Of course, it was also because I was callously trolling a thread about the Japan Earthquake. Disasters always make good trollbait.

    But, that was off-topic tangent. Online friends can be really witty and funny and friendly - hell, you can even fall in love with them! But, personally, an hour with IRL friends beats thousands with internet friends.

    That's my view on it.

    Noob out.
     
    You know, I've wondered about this many times in the past... Everytime I reach a somewhat weak conclusion, the same question repeats in my mind again.
    Right now, I'm pretty stable with the decision that it can only be a good thing. You have to make the bond, feel the bond. Otherwise, even real life people will never become actual friends.

    Sure, we are somewhat limited because of the distance. We are mainly limited to texts and emoticons, but that is pretty much enough to keep a friendship up.

    Moreover, I'm gonna have to agree with ShinyMeowth there. It's really much more of a possibility to find just your type of people here, maybe because of the vast amount of people out here, though I won't say that's my case. I only talked to a handful of people in the internet, and most of them end up becoming my friends. What does that tell? People more like me are just flocking over here?
    As you can tell from my previous statement, another reason this idea makes an excellent impact on my life is because in real life, I'm really socially introverted. And just like ShinyMeowth, I can't really find someone worthwhile. High standards? I think not...

    It's only a good thing, and it shouldn't be in any way harmful to any aspects of life, like making friends in real life. These things are not related, and if making friends here is doing something bad for someone in real life, that person is not doing it the right way.
     
    Not at all, just because you don't see them in real life, doesn't make them any different to your real life friends.

    I do have a few online friends that I do consider to be very close, so I don't think it is pointless.​
    ​
     
    I used to think so. I really felt that it'd be too much of a hassle to meet certain people. I had actually made quite a few friends that live in my vicinity, maybe about an hour or two away tops, but I also have friends that live in other countries thanks to PC.

    I'm thinking differently these days for a few reasons. First of all, people behind the computer screen are real and have feelings. Dropping them and making less effort to make contact with them is just as rude and insulting as it would be to people in real life. It's just easier on the internet, really, because if you don't come online, they don't have any way of contacting you. It's not like you see the people you're drifting away from on a daily basis (in high school, for example).

    Secondly, of my (old) group of friends on PC, I've met everyone that's lived in my vicinity, some on more than one occasion even. Last summer it got even better cause one of my friends came up from Illinois, which was awesome. And this summer I'm flying over to California to meet another friend. Really, meeting friends from the online is hard, but I think it's really worth it. Because chances are, you'll get a great trip out of it. It costs money, but it's definitely worth it.

    Online friendships are just as important as real life ones.
     
    Do you think it's worth having PC friends? Or in general, having internet friends?

    Yes, I think it's worth it. For a person like me, who has trouble talking about themselves and who is self-conscious. Even with my rl, I don't talk about myself, or what I like because I don't like to be judged, but on here I'm pretty much accepted by my PC friends :)
     
    If I asked my parents this when I first joined the forum when I was 14, they would have said "YES, YES IT'S POINTLESS, EVERYONE ONLINE IS A CREEP DON'T DO IT". And I would have said the same thing, not because people are creeps but because I never thought I'd make legit friends on here back when I first joined yknow?

    I consider my friends I met on here (that i've known for several years) to be some of my closest friends irl or on the internet because they know me better, talked to me when I had no one else to go to, helped me through stuff, and were just plain fun. True friends do that regardless whether it's face to face or hours on msn. For example, it always amazes me that one of my friends on here (Harmony) can tell within a minute of our IMs on msn if something is bothering me while my irl friends can hang out with me all night while I fight back tears and never notice.

    it's not pointless, and I think most of here know that :)
     
    Not pointless at all. I actually met the guy I'm seeing right now online. I tell people that, they tend not to believe me. You can meet some wonderful people online, but of course, do be wary of taking it further than the internet. :)
     
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