darkSpyro

tbh ive been having thoughts about internet friends recently and comparing the feelings they give me compared to my irl friends. im not saying one is worse than the other but i feel like irl friends just have more of an impact on me. like seeing a physical person is makes me more open than hearing a voice or a seeing a text response.

also topic title was clickbait no **** online friends are real friends

I mean people are more or less inclined to prefer physical content, changes for everyone.

I like a bit of both tbh and i like having my IRL friends online to chat too, sometimes the social battery can only be extended to exchanging memes, sometimes I go out with them all day

I find it a lot easier to connect with new friends online than in person for some reason. Maybe the anonymity makes me less anxious, if something goes wrong I can just block them and disappear lol

My online friends are the only friends I have, so if they're not real friends, then I wouldn't have any.


It goes without saying, of course they are.

internet friends were like the only people i had for the majority of my life. they all had some impact on me so i consider them friends. nowadays i only talk to a couple of the OGs since we all kind of went our separate ways. real life friends definitely know me more because theres just some things that can't be conveyed through text. i really want to meet my internet friends someday

Yeah as someone who's friends group is primarily online I remember back then when I would be like "no you don't get it these are real friends". But I think when I started to hang out with people more it just felt better? I think it might have something to do with people being able to set up an image for themselves online. Like a second persona

Quote: somePerson

Yeah as someone who's friends group is primarily online I remember back then when I would be like "no you don't get it these are real friends". But I think when I started to hang out with people more it just felt better? I think it might have something to do with people being able to set up an image for themselves online. Like a second persona

I'd argue though that people have a second persona in real life too. The internet might make it easier due to anonymity, but it's not really that private of a place anymore to where you can easily conceal who you actually are. I've unfortunately had more instances in real life of people lying to me about who they are, or when I eventually see their true colors and I just don't want to associate with them anymore. I've only had that happen to me a couple times online, it's not rare, but definitely not as common as it would happen in real life @_@

But each person's experience is different. I feel like I've been backstabbed, manipulated, and lied to more in my real life friendship circles than in my online ones. I didn't start making actual friends in real life until I found friends online. So as much as I love my best friends in real life, I feel like my heart will always gravitate towards my online friends more.

i dont have and never have had any friends irl i guess i dont even have friends online either? i wasnt allowed to have friends or talk to other people until i was around 15-16 and by then i didnt even know how to do this "make friends" thing people generally ignored me irl and online ive only ever made 1 friend who i guess you can consider real but even then any friend i made seemed to only want me as an online friend which makes me feel like yeah it is a lower tier kind of friendship. i was told a lot and really still have been recently by some immediate family that because ive never had irl friends i dont know anything about having them at all and that my only friend/friends do not count it makes me sad because it feels like im missing some integral part of being a human

i understand that a lot of people see things like you do though i have had many people online laugh when i would call them my friend and say "we're not really friends because we dont know one another irl" it hurts a lot but i feel like i guess most people think like that idk. i would like to think online friends can be real friends if not i guess im in fact really much more of a loser than i pretend to be or thought i was because i have no/never have had real friends

I would say internet friends are real friends, but nothing can replace IRL friends. I believe we need in-person interaction.


-Sincerely, someone who has neither lol.

Internet friends are love, Internet friends are life

i feel like this is a sister topic to lindsey's...

anyway, not that i have friends on or offline outside of family members that i can count on one hand, i personally don't think the means through which you communicate with someone affects whether or not they're a real friend. i think it's either party's willingness to actually be a real friend that determines that. you're probably less likely to meet someone online who's looking for that level of commitment. conversely, the highest level of commitment i've ever gotten from anyone i've met has been from people online. that's still very little, but yeah, fwiw.

you have the potential to have **** friends irl, who will disappoint and betray you more than some online friends might. it could go either way, so i can't see how online friends are inherently not real when either one could turn out to be more ****ty than the other.

also, when irl friends move away from each other, they kind of become online friends, no? are they now not real? i know people with friendships like this, and the people involved have been better friends than a lot of the people they had around them all the time.

tl;dr, i don't think what makes a friend real or not is whether you interact with them in person. i think your relationship with that person is what determines that, and while most people are more likely to build that sort of a relationship irl than online, it's not exclusive.

i feel like it's possible to have friends both online and offline. i think the nature of the relationship is different depending on whether or not you're interacting in meatspace or on the web. there are benefits and drawbacks to both

irl friends are very cool and fun, but for various reasons (like demographic/location/disability), it can be hard to find and maintain those relationships

internet friends are very cool and fun, too, but i've found there's more disconnect bc of the digital nature of interactions

for me, i've enjoyed having both irl and offline friends. but i also know there are people who benefit more from one or the other