I wanted to provoke some thought and ask this question. it goes off the logic that
There is no incentive to be decent or kind online and they are no consequences for them.
I can go on some random discord or forum and start saying terrible disgusting things but, i’ll only get banned, and move on to the next. Anyone could do that.
Compared to real life, there’s more of a connection, social connection, more of a reason to not be a douchebag.
You can see the person, you know them beyond a profile picture and text.
This isn’t supposed to be some profound thing that challenges everyone’s online presence, it can but it’s more of a half assed take I’ve been thinking about for months now.
Is the internet good for making friends? If so why? If not, why?
I can not think of a single reason why the internet would be better other than distance. Real life is far superior in every facet, except I guess it’s probably less expensive
Most friends you make on the internet are made because you had something in common. Take this forum, for example, without it, I doubt most of us would go out of our way to contact another.
I’d say people are more like themselves on the internet because they don’t have to worry about how other people view them, whether or not it’s in a positive or negative light. Both methods have their ups and downs. It’s a whole lot easier to make friends online because it’s a lot easier to find people worth being friends with. Off the screen, it’s more difficult to find friends unless you know where to start looking but it’s easier to create long-lasting meaningful friendships because of the face-to-face aspect.
If you want someone to talk to you, go online, if you want someone to understand you, go outside.
Another thing about that social connection is example for school is that if you make your classmates hate you won’t have a second chance they will remember what you did and may in some cases not forgive you leaving you alone in the class with no friends.
The internet may in some cases be a place where you can’t make friends because of the ■■■■■■■■■■ who keep on running stuff and for me as an example I ain’t making friends when I play a match of Cs:go with four strangers.
I don’t try to mix my real-life with my online persona because then things get too complicated. My friends list has people I know IRL, and there’s people IRL that I know use Steam either semi-regularly or super-actively, but I don’t hangout with them online.
Take a look at the top row of the pinned section of my friends list.
The first person I met on War of the Web – a cross-platform browser game. We play basically any game together.
The second person we met on a TF2 RocketJump server. Domo and I were hardcore TF2 players, and this person has only been on a casual server like once in the last three years. They used to be a more avid trader.
The other three are more self-explanatory, but I introduced Yarr to TF2 (although we stopped playing together because ping), and Deathismad and I have done some streams together. Nelson and I talk about non-Unturned stuff.
I have a category called “Real-Life” in my friends list. Excluding one of my alts, there’s 10 people in it, and not all of them even use Steam anymore.
The five people at the top of my pinned area live across North America (US and Canada) or… Australia, but there’s people in my friends list that I interact with from Germany, France, Latin America, etc.
The first person knows my real-life better than any of my IRL friends/acquaintances, although there’s a few IRL people that understand vastly more than others.
I think it pretty much goes both ways with which method is better. Unless you have a very close and out of the ordinary experience with someone you’ll probably not know exactly what kind of a person they are with either method.
IRL, people generally will judge you for how you look, not just how you act. The internet tends to force people to accept others based on their personality.
Connections with other people also won’t matter as much on the internet while in person, people may only want to be friends with someone who is already part of a group they know.
The ability to stay pretty much anonymous on the internet means that people can choose to act however they want but a few people try to show their true self online.
I introduce a few of my IRL friends to internet friends, though most of the time I keep them separate. I only really introduce those who I think would mesh well with the Internet friends, most of the time I’m right about that, and some of those interactions have caused friendships to form between my IRL and Internet friends that otherwise wouldn’t form.
The groups of friends that I don’t try to mix are my different internet friends actually. I’m in a few friend circles outside of my dominant Unturned circle, a TF2 Circle, Animation Circle, Post-IRL Circle (Friends that used to be IRL but due to moving/changing of schools we no longer see each other in person), SuperWorldSun Circle, and a Sandbox Circle. I’ll sometimes add some of these friends to random calls if we need someone else for a game, or just for the lols. (One of my Favourites to add is from the Animation Circle, I think you might have met him actually) Though this usually doesn’t go so well.
As for the question, this thread asks. Yes, absolutely. You need to be careful with the kind of people you tell things, but there are a lot of good figures on the internet for you to meet. And here’s the best part, most of the people you will meet will like what you like, or at least what you met them through. You also get to meet people from all over the world. Without the internet, I would have never met people like @AnimaticFreak, @danaby2, @Renaxon, @Union, @FleshyPig, @Froggo, @Noobyfish, @FlodotelitoKifo, @MagicalBurrito, @SirAdy, SDGNelson, MamaMax, Sir_Pink, UEAKCrash, ArraySeven, and hundreds of others.
Every single person on here is someone that I have interacted within some sort of meaningful way, meaningful enough that I decided to keep them as a friend. My Discord Friendslist is even larger, and I actually talk to a lot of those people a lot more than those on my steam friendslist.
So yes, the Internet is a good, and valid way to make friends, some of which may be your friend for the rest of your life.
I don’t think it particularly better or worse than IRL, it’s just infinitely easier to find people that you share common interests with. I can simplify my group of friends into three ‘circles’:
IRL. We don’t talk too much online because going outside and hanging out is more fun. Still have a local discord server where we can plan out going to get food and ridesharing and stuff like that.
A collection of loosely-connected TF2 server people. Back when I used to admin and later host a server group called ‘Fiala & Inverts’, I made a lot of friends and we had quite a few discord servers, until the servers died and community split into two separate communities, and the one which I joined later re-absorbed the other into a semi-whole group again. After I overthrew a co-owner with the community’s help due to abuse, it was just me and an inactive member, and I later transferred ownership to yet another friend of mine. Around this time I found the old owner’s Discord and we hung out. His discord server, albeit small but tightly knit, is now my ‘primary’ friend group online, with him and I hopefully meeting up IRL soon.
Unturned-centered communities. There’s a lot of these but I can lump them together due to overlap of members between them. By far the largest and most active of the three central groups, I’ve met up with someone from here (Shuiro), and Molt and I almost met up twice (once when he was here on a trip to Chicago, another when I almost took a trip out to [REDACTED] earlier this month). Also the only group so far where I’m trying to mail someone something (and It’ll come soon hopefully, you know who you are ).
I only have about 20 steam friends, I’m still baffled by people with hundreds of them.
I think real life and the internet are both pretty good for making friends, but the internet can really help you make friends that might have relatively niche interests. I still only have 1-2 friends in real life that enjoy pc gaming.
Pretty sure that’s due to you leaving ever discord server with your online friends, then removing everyone as a friend, and then setting dms to friends only.
Sharing addresses, face, name are very risky, that part is obvious to some but not a lot of others, I mentioned how you can’t face consequences for being an ■■■■■■■ online, but if any part of your personal identity is connected things become a lot more dangerous
I think if you share struggles and someone belittles them (although I really struggle with taking things lightly) they aren’t friends, and you can move on without them, so they’res not much being careful there because that clearly means they’re bad.
Also back to your anwser I have a bit of a tough time finding good figures, mainly how I act is just strange a bit conflicting and complicated.
I think it’s important to always be slow in school, with social, keep a low profile, approach those with similar interests. It really depends on what you do but honestly, that sounds like a middle school thing, and considering how immature those people can be, it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t think anyone is like that in highschool but it probably depends on a lot of other things.
This last part actually hits home with me. My definition with friends is a bit more serious, like someone who I can rely on and they can rely on me, that we can be personal, but not afraid either. Clearly, I’ve been using the internet for the wrong purposes, and some of the points I just made before typing this become a bit redundant and kind of conflict of what i’m saying now.
This is most likely of a result of replacing real life interaction with online interaction, you tend to mesh the two together and it gets messy. Maybe you could tell how much someone uses the internet by seeing how personal they get.
True, if you’re looking for people to understand you, communication still happens a lot
I really don’t think it’s like this. opinions base off of personality, and maybe I should explore other parts but it’s more hive-mind like ((reddit)). People argue and treat opinions as facts.
Ahh TF2 was pretty fun, it seems like a great way to just talk to people, you aren’t forced to use a mic and everyone is chill, I should pick it up again sometime
From my experience it is definitely harder to gain someone’s full trust online, but in the end you can get lasting friendships that would be equally profound to relationships you’d make IRL, if not more so.
When I came to the Unturned community I was a really shy person in real life, struggling with a lot of things which I found impossible to surpass at the time, but the Internet was like a sanctuary where I could try to express myself to the fullest, and thus I ended up forming myself more and meeting people like myself. Although, if you were to meet me on the street, I might be a compltetely different person than I am in here, which often makes me question whether or not building a personality mainly in the online medium changed the way I interact with people into habits of conversing and befriending peeps which only apply here.
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