Comments on: Friends I’ve Never Met

By: Erik R.

Erik R. — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:45:17 +0000

Thanks, mp and Bri!

By: Bri

Bri — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:22:12 +0000

That’s so great, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Makes me want to print it out and hand it to any of my non-blogging friends who look at me funny when I mention a blog friend.

By: mp

mp — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:30:25 +0000

Amen!!
I could not have said that any better..we’re having a local bloggy get together this weekend w/ 15 people I’ve never met face to face..yet I KNOW them! Non bloggers just don’t get it!

By: sgazzetti

sgazzetti — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:23:32 +0000

The most famous of these packages, of course, has its own blog.

That sentence cracked me up.

Another layer of the whole thing is Flickr, and the fact that you can also subscribe via RSS to your contacts’ photos. Seeing, as well as reading, adds to the sense of ‘knowing’ someone you’ve never met.

I agree about the ’social itch/scratch’ element, and for me it’s especially gratifying because I have a pretty limited ‘real life’ social circle at the moment.

Two of my four siblings are ‘internet people’ (you’ll have seen comments on isoglossia from them posting as Elsa and gaoo, and you’ve probably worked out that they’re my sisters). The other two are emphatically not, and as far as I know they have never read my blog or seen my Flickr photos. So you and some of your readers know more about my sons’ lives than their own aunt and uncle do. This both makes me sad and fills me with a sense of awe at the internet’s social power.

By: Tina

Tina — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:26:23 +0000

Yay! I’m in complete agreement; this is a pretty special little group we’ve constructed here. Long may it continue, and here’s hoping we can all meet physically sooner or later too.

By: paola

paola — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:57:20 +0000

I must say that when Simon started talking about what I thought where his imaginary friends I was a bit worried… So I started reading you too, and soon realised that there are some pretty real qualities in these friendships!
Then of course you totally won me over with the New York trip

By: jane

jane — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:32:52 +0000

I cannot remember how most of my online community found its way to me and how I found them. I assume this should bother me but it doesn’t, as it just seems part of the organic networking process.

I like my blog community as well, despite your continuing presence in it.* With a tiny handful of exceptions, my online community is comprised of people I have never met. I consider you all to be real friends. Not online friends or some other ridiculous qualifier, but actual honest-to-god friends. Even that spaghetti guy.

*I kid!

By: simon

simon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:15:30 +0000

All I can say is “hear, hear”. I’ve had the same experience, in temrs of how I went about meeting people, and how I reacted to it. I assumed that my blog would be pretty much just for myself and a couple of my existing friends who were online, whereas in fact the tiny little “community” that’s grown up around it is one of the most surprising and gratifying things about the whole endeavour.
And yes, I also get annoyed when people talk about online life versus “real” life, as if this is all just a Sims-style game, as if we weren’t really connecting with other people.