Saturday, October 11, 2008

Virtual reality.



When we grow up, work, get married, have kids, our world sort of shrinks. We lose touch with people, which is understandable. Of course, there is a natural challenge with physical distance, but my best friends are still my oldest - those whose faces and voices have been part of my daily life even when invariably, they too had become part of my online network of friends.
Which brings me to a topic i have been musing about - do you consider friendship that develops via the internet a "real" friendship? Are "on-line" friends, equal to "real-life" friends?
Being in front of the computer most of my waking hours, i don't know anymore where one ends and where the other begins, or if it even matters.
Like real life, I've met some people online who I thought were great and had become my friends, and there are people I initially knew in real life who I only get to communicate through email and by chatting online, because we have moved into different locations. So maybe by meeting online first, we just flip the script?
I count myself lucky for being able to dive into the cyber community and get the support and laughter and so on, that I need to keep going in my daily real life.
I think that in the end, online friends can be there for each other in some ways that "real" friends might not be- but real friends have their own definite advantage.
Still, I'm quite sure that good friends can offer support in a variety of ways and the computer is one of them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ahaha...

i agree for i myself also have friends "ON-LINE" whom i share the stories of my life..

just be careful whom to trust..

but you must also be trustworthy...!!

:) rOck n' rOll

Sir,William said...

This is a great subject and I am sure it will be some time before we can trust people you can,t touch in the flesh.

I for one am gullible at first, then there are ways to know about the other person as they either slip away or continue to chat or other communication's you can develop true friends.

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