With the World Wild Wild Web out there, more and more people are getting exposed to strangers.
OK..that didn't sound right. Let's try again.
With online message boards, blogs, etc... people are virtually "meeting" people that have similar interests that may live across the state, country, or world. They may never meet IRL ("in real life"), yet they may learn things about each other, each other's families, work, likes, dislikes, etc...
So, this brings us to the BQOTD:
Can You Be Friends With Someone You've Not Met IRL?
Um, yeah!!!
Proof:
When John and I got engaged, I joined The Knot. The Knot is a huge online wedding planning site with a chat board for every imaginable topic related to wedding planning (and beyond.) I gravitated towards my "local board" (the Boston board). I got helpful advice on wedding planning and vendors local to Boston.
I also got my first taste of the dark side of online chat boards.
I saw how mean people could be when they were hiding behind a "screen name" (it was often discovered that someone would create multiple screen names and could be perfectly nice in one thread, but nasty in another.)
However, the positive outweighed the negative (someone even GAVE me four Bruins tickets!) and I stepped outside of my comfort zone and met these "strangers" IRL at a GTG (that's "get together" for those not familiar.)
An outing to a Red Sox game was planned for the group.
(There was a segment in Red Sox broadcasts where the onfield reporter would go into the stands and interview someone deemed "not your typical fan," thus the t-shirt slogan.) (Sorry I didn't iron it. :)
Clever, eh?
I had a great time and keep in touch with a few people from that group via Facebook. (And, they're just as helpful now, years later, as they were back on the chat board. One offered to teach me to knit and lets me know if Golden Retriever puppies are available from a friend of her family. I can still ask them questions about local places/services and know they'll be happy to help...and vice versa.)
Once you get married, the next chat board in the natural progression of life is The Nest. The Nest, similar to The Knot, is an online planning site for home buying and other "married life" topics, i.e., cooking, money, health, relationships. (There's a completely separate one for having children, The Bump.)
When we were looking at houses in late 2007, I decided to join The Nest. I figured I'd poke around on the local Boston board there, but I don't remember posting much there. Somehow, I was drawn to the Decorating & Renovating board (fondly known as "D&R.")
I got help/advice on house layouts, paint, bathroom fixtures, washing machine brands, etc...
That "etc..." consisted of laughs.
LOTS of laughs.
Some will find it crazy, but I found myself spending lots of time (maybe too much?) posting and responding to posts that didn't necessarily have to do with buying a house.
I found myself getting to know those that posted in D&R.
We each had "signatures" (text/photo/links at the bottom of each of our posts/responses) that helped me to get to know fellow posters.
I'd see a Golden Retriever in someone's signature and start asking questions, sharing pictures, etc...
I'd see a sports logo in someone's signature and start asking about their team.
The drama soon started up on the Board (same nonsense that happened on the Knot...and in some cases even nastier) and a subset of us decided we'd had enough but wanted to continue our friendship via an online format. (I say "we" but I think it was a few people that spearheaded the move. I'm sure someone will correct me. :)
We were able to post/chat without trolls butting in and causing drama.
While we kept our screen names from The Nest, we shared more private details about our lives with each other during this time. (We even had each others' addresses, as we did ornament exchanges, sent cards for occasions, etc...)
Over time, two people dropped out, leaving us with 13.
Then along came Facebook.
We would not only be "friends" on Facebook, but we would move our group there, as well. (One stop shopping!)
The odd thing about moving our group there, was that now our "real names" were staring us in the face.
On The Nest and in Google Groups, we referred to each other by our screen names (often names, often words/numbers) and for me, it was hard to start calling these people I'd gotten to know by their "real" names. (Occasionally I still throw out a screen name to see if anyone's paying attention.)
All of this is to say, that YES, you absolutely positively can be friends with someone you've not met IRL.
Our group of 13 lives in 11 states (soon to be 10.)
We're single (yet in a committed relationship), married, divorced, remarried.
We're parents, stepparents, aunts.
We're teachers (a lot of us are!), librarians, bakers, Tupperware saleswomen, legal assistants, businesswomen, graphic designers, musicians, and more.
We've been there for each other through births and deaths, marriages and divorces, bad jobs, illnesses, miscarriages, going back to school, graduating, moving, getting a pet...and just about any other major life event that you can think of.
We encourage each other.
We give advice to each other (sometimes unsolicited :)
We disagree with one another.
We make each other laugh.
And while four of our current group have met each other IRL (one member even attended the wedding of another member!), the majority of us have not.
We do joke about a GTG at the Mall of America or Aruba or Las Vegas and when one of us hits Powerball, we expect this to happen.
Until then?
We'll continue our friendship of almost eight years just the way we have been!
