Fragile friendships and the internetFollow

This year I lost some friends. People I met from the internet, some I have met in person. Its been a horrible attrition.

Some just dissapeared and I worry they lost their jobs. Some I know have moved home and so did I. I have no up to date phone numbers for some of them and they never appear on skype and do not reply to Emails. If like me they changed email address, that would make sense.

One, I had an argument with and it appears they have cut all contact with me. Easy to do if you need never meet unless you wish to. But its hard to make amends that way.

I'm glad to say I did make fresh contact with 2 on-line friends this year, its not all bad news.

There was an article in the times I will not bore you with about the fragility of friendships maintained over social networks where you do not need to meet personally. Where an incident can lead to lost contact. Its all too easy to move, and forget to update people. To move Email addresses, or go offline a long time and forget to tell people why. Sometimes to have an argument and block people from your contact list (yes, I'm guilty of that in one case).

In our wired world with the world at our fingertips, is it just becomming as easy to lose contact as it is to make contact with people? Are friendships as solid as they should be and would be if the internet was not there? When its not possible to just pop over the road or to the next town to say hello its much harder to stay in touch.

And on a completely random point, a survey in the UK showed that till the 1950's most people barely moved 50 miles from where they were born in their lifetime. They lived, worked and died in one region. Now, its completely up in the air, myself having lived and worked in 4 continents and now living hundreds of miles from my place of birth. My BF has also moved hundreds of miles from his home. This seems normal for most of my (non internet) friends.

Well thats enough Tory rambling from me. Not sure what point I was trying to make but I feel better for posting my livejournal replacement post

and some people you can't get rid of no matter how hard you try.

Edited, Aug 2nd 2009 6:53pm by caesaraugustus

I'm still in touch with friends I made on the Internet back in 1994. sometimes we go missing for a year or to, but always know how to contact each other on our guild websites.

Which reminds me to go update them on the current saga of my health. Plus I like to update them with new photo of me with my shorter hair. I had about 8 inches cut off to make bushing it left handed easier.

Where does Samira keep yours?

I never keep in touch with anyone. I don't login to AIM, or Myspace, although I have accounts on both.

I'm still an internet relationship racist.

I have a hard time equating real peoples with internet peoples. The internet peeps are like a storybook characters. You get to know them and stuff, some you really like and connect with, but they're still just fiction for the most part. When the story is finished you'll forget all about the vast majority of them.

With my core group of online people...those that I met when I first truly started to go online in 2002, I still keep in constant contact with. We talk around once a week, usually by phone/IM/text message. There's maybe four?

Those that I play XI with, or used to at least, I talk to on a weekly/biweekly basis. Even if we lose contact with each other, they usually end up popping up somewhere along the line.

Irl...I talk to my high school friends (I'm in post grad) every two-three days, never less than once a week. My undergrad friends...maybe every couple of weeks or so. I barely talk to my post-grad frends atm.

My irl best friend I still talk to on a daily basis, even if it's just a quick text message.

Time heals all wounds...even thoughts fights I have had with people do gradually fade away into nothingness. Just gotta have a strong group to be around to begin with.