Online friends, do you take them seriously?

[Neith]

I have a few online friends I've talked to for years (people I met mainly in PSO GC/BB and PSU). I don't really make a distinction between online and otherwise when it comes to friends.

I've met one of them a couple of times, and a few of them are playing other games with me. I think after knowing them for a few years (and more importantly, putting up with me for that long) it'd be pretty harsh to treat them any different to friends I can see more readily.

Also, random gift bombing on Steam is always fun

[Ce'Nedra]

As sad it is i got no friends irl so i see online friends as my friends yes. I have yet to meet up with any of them though aside from one girl from a FPS game I was in a clan with. There are some people who I consider more friends then others, and some of them I would love to meet up with sometime in my life. Sadly almost none of them live in my country

[Norco]

I have given some people I have met online my number and they have given me theirs. This way we can easily text back and forward, works great for me since I got free texting to the entire world xD I would say that is enough to count as serious.

[Shirai]

I have a few friends that I consider them as true friends. I wouldn't actually give them my cellphone number since I'm on my computer most of the time. But if I could every imagine meeting IRL, it'd be just a group of great friends. Since we're all really close in a way.

[Ghost Inside]

By the way, I came to think of something.

I think this was two years ago, a friend of mine hadn't logged onto IM for a couple of months, possibly longer - which was very unlike her!
She'd sometimes disappear for 3-4 weeks at a time, which was regular but never for that long! She didn't really have an e-mail account she could log into, I knew that: So I'd sent her a physical letter. She lives in the US so I know it takes maybe a week, maybe a little more from here by snailmail.

So from a little before I posted the letter to about two weeks later I was all torn up with worry wondering if she was dead or something. And this work-ish (not really work-work) related lady was a bit grump with me because I didn't do my tasks and things on time and so I told her about it and her face just said she didn't understand a thing what I just said. Just a look of complete incomprehension! And she asked me something about it, sounding as if I was a bit unhinged to think of my friend as a real friend, and just sort of shrugged it off and went back to talking about the things I had to do. I was quite visibly upset, too!

*sighs* It so frustrating when it happens! >.<
Does this happen to others much as well?

Oh, and I found out she was fine about 2 weeks after I sent the letter.

[FOkyasuta]

*sighs* It so frustrating when it happens! >.<
Does this happen to others much as well?

Me? Yeah to a certain extent. Depends on how well i know them TBH.

[Ryno]

there was even this one girl online i met 6 years ago. met her on xanga. then. moved to myspace. then to facebook. we talked on the for for like 6-8 hours. she was a model. she shared the same interest. too. she only lived 5 hours away from me. she's Vietnamese but a few years later she turn me down because it was too complicated because it was long distance and i couldn't afford to visit her.

[Ghost Inside]

Me? Yeah to a certain extent. Depends on how well i know them TBH.

Um... I meant people not taking you seriously when you tell them you have this great friend halfway around the world that you've never met in person.

[ForceOfBrokenGlass]

I suppose not. I wasn't much for making friends in real life. I'm probably less people-friendly online. My real life friends turned out to be fairly unreliable anyway, so I suppose if trust is the issue, I have yet to meet anybody I trust that much on either side of the information superhighway.

[Crysteon]

I have a few friends that I met in online games (PSU included) and that I still keep in touch with them (I met one of my best friends in an online game and we have kept in touch for like 6 years since we both quit that game). I have used stuff like MSN or Skype to keep in touch with them also...it's always nice to ask how they've been and talk about random stuff.

There are times it's hard for me to trust online friendships, but once I find enough incentives to go a bit farther I take that friendship more seriously....but, yeah, if I dont trust people enough I just keep using them for whatever purpose I feel like accomplishing (as harsh as that shit sounds, but it's the truth).