Today was a bit different that most in that we met up with our Internet friend Vlad from the Ukraine whom I’d met randomly on-line around 2 years ago. He was over here for a week to see his friends who had come here to work and he wanted to meet the couple he chatted with sometimes on-line.
The Secret Life Of us
I’m a notoriously private person and seldom that keen to break the fourth wall of Internet friendship (I build my own defensive walls, my partner less so) but he’d come all this way and we’ve been talking for around 2 years and he seemed like a nice person with a great command of and interest in the English language and our peculiar culture. I’m usually nervous about meeting new people but didn’t seem to put out by the experience and anyway he had an excellent command of the English language.
Still about people?
There’s a lot of talk about on-line social networking not being really social but once in a while any one of us can make connections and friendships on-line with people we wouldn’t otherwise meet in our immediate neighbourhood ( and where we live hardly anybody in the ‘real world’ knows their neighbour) and sometimes choose to do ‘the real thing’.
Vlad couldn’t stay too long but we talked a fair while and he was keen to have a good old British cup of tea. What a civilised young man.
Picture by fotografisch under this creative commons license
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“Internet sceptics” are always ready to say that online friendships can never be “proper” friendships but I would dismiss that as ignorance. Tigger and I have met in the flesh several people we first encountered online.
In any case, what is wrong with friendships that develop purely online? Nothing. Nobody criticizes the relationships of pen-friends and online firnedships are much more immediate and vivid.