Digital Friendships

Today, I read that one of my online friends is dealing with some changes in her life, and probably won’t be around as much. I felt really sad about that and said so. Then a little while later, while I was browsing my flickr contacts photos, I wondered if I had a reason to feel sad and say so, or a right…

And then it struck me suddenly how strange online friendships are, just by the very nature of being digital, and I just felt the need to write about it. So I am.

It’s hard to know, for me anyway, what relationship truly exists between myself and those I call friend that I have met online. I believe that I truly care about a lot of the people I’ve met online, and have called friend and I would hope that feeling is returned. But I realised also how very little I know of my online friends’ lives apart from our shared interests, and how little they know of mine. And that made me feel so sad, and so… distant.

I felt like writing a long biography of myself so that I could become real to these digital friends.  Show a picture of myself, so they’d see my face when they thought of me. Give them the opportunity to know me as I am… Because I love it when I have seen pictures of my online friends, and when I learn things about them apart from this shared interest that has formed the basis of my friendships with them. They become something more than just words and interests shared. However, I do equally appreciate them even if I don’t know them apart from their dolls. Because after all, that shared joy in bjd’s is there and that is something and wonderful.

…I also felt like running away because perhaps I have always presumed too much, and felt more than was there. (and that is my black dog talking)

I do believe friendships can exist without the friends ever meeting in person. The written word can be more than adequate to support a real relationship. And I have felt genuine happiness upon learning of one’s upcoming marriage, relief and happiness for another who was cleared of heart trouble, and so forth. Real feelings that you feel for your real friends.

But I think sometimes… rather often, honestly… that it isn’t right of me to wonder where my online friends are when I don’t see them there or wonder about them when they do or don’t do something I expect them to, because what do I really know of their ‘real’ life? But I do wonder. I noticed a friend’s absence and the ‘out of character’ behaviour of another friend. I wondered, and wanted to ask, but didn’t know if I had the right to do so. I guess because I wonder, too, if that shared love for bjd’s can translate into anything that can be called a friendship when so much of the interchange is based solely on dolls. Then again, why not. Shared interests are the best way to form a friendship.

I doubt these thoughts would strike me so deeply as they do if it weren’t for the fact that most of my relationships are based online. I have a husband, and one friend, and several acquaintances that I see in person. They form my physical social network. Everyone else is online. Even my family. I haven’t seen my sister in real life, or any of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces or nephews for seven years, some longer. I’ve never met in person my sister’s husband. I’ve never met in person my sister’s child. But she knows my voice and my face on Skype. She turned two recently. I haven’t seen my brother for three years and my parents for almost the same. So my online life is very real to me, because it has to be, which is probably rather uncommon, and causes me to have a skewed view of the real depth of the relationships formed there. I don’t think that it is wrong, really, probably just uncommon.

I feel funny even considering posting this online…  And perhaps I shouldn’t… Because at the same time that I feel and hope some kind of a real friendship may exist with any of my digital friends and they would understand why I wrote this, it is second nature to mask our real selves online. Not hide or lie, per se, but not say more than is necessary. Like these thoughts. But on the other hand, I am more than just my dolls, as are my friends, and I do have these thoughts and they are not bad thoughts…

Another funny thing about digital friendships is that it is hard to follow the accepted social structure for a friendship, simply because you don’t have to. Online friendships are in theory and probably in practice free of obligation of any kind. So it is hard to know what the rules and boundaries are. Hard to know where the line is that you don’t cross, if there even is one. And, what if I hurt someone by posting this?

But it is only that I was inspired to say (in a sideways shy sort of manner because I am better and more comfortable with soliloquies) that I do deeply appreciate all of my online friends and am so grateful that I have them, regardless of the depth of the friendship, and even if we don’t know what each other’s smiles look like. It is just nice to have people who do make you smile.

So, Thank You to all of you for brightening my life in so many ways, for making me laugh, and writing stories and taking pictures that move me deeply enough to laugh, sigh, and cry and for enjoying the things I love with me. You’re all wonderful.