The joy of online friends

Once upon a time (a long, long time ago), a Government contractor walked up to me at work and asked "Do you have a home computer?" When I answered yes, he handed me a business card. It was for his BBS (bulletin board system), which was the way folks got online back before the Internet was widely used and AOL became a household name. Thus began my long history of making friends online.  I have made many more friends online (some of whom I've never met) than in "real life."  Some online friends have also become long-time "real life" friends.

In those early years online, I met a group of local people that were all pretty silly like me (as you can see from the picture at left).  Some of us travelled together for 10 years--from 1996 to 2006. We went on three Caribbean cruises together; made three trips to the Hawaiian islands; gambled together in Vegas, Atlantic City and Paradise Island (in the Bahamas) and had a few other trips in between.  We got along well, liked doing the same things, and had a lot of fun.

Below, you'll see sisters Helen & Lynn and I at a luau in Maui (Hawaii) and having lunch in a Paradise Island restaurant.  Below that, the larger group is shown in Kauai (Hawaii) and at the ruins in Mexico.

Some years later, I joined AOL and was fortunate enough to find my way to two fantastic chatrooms--DC Chit Chat and Bookaccino--both of which had a major impact on me.  The first group was local, so we socialized regularly in person; the other was national, and there was an annual gathering in a major city somewhere in the U.S.  The first two pictures below are of some of our DC chat group at the wedding of two of our members, and at the Maryland Renaissance Festival.  The second two pictures are of the Bookaccino group at the two annual gatherings I attended--one in Baltimore, MD and one in Philadelphia, PA.

In 2003, I decided the time had come for me to finally change my lifestyle over the long term in terms of eating and exercise for health reasons, so I joined an Internet board dedicated to those issues.  There, I met many wonderful and supportive people, one of whom was Denise, who lives on the West Coast.  Denise continues to be a close friend of mine to this day, despite having only met her in person one time for a few hours (she and her family came to DC for a vacation in 2005).  We speak every week via AIM (AOL instant messenger).

In the past two years, I have made many friends on Flickr, a photo-sharing website to which I am a frequent contributor.  I even became re-acquainted with a woman on Flickr who I'd originally "met" on the healthy eating board but who no longer frequents that board.  I have not had the honor of meeting any of my Flickr friends in person yet, but I feel pretty certain that it will happen eventually.

I have also "met" new friends on Dogster, a pet-lovers site; Twitter, a social networking site; Shelfari, a book-lovers site and a website for Amazon Vine reviewers. 

I've known people who would come right out and say that online friends weren't "real."  I've known a number of people who would be chatting with the group every day for a year and then suddenly disappear into thin air, never to be heard from again--not caring enough to let us know what happened and why they were no longer part of the group.  To those of us who take our online friendships as seriously as "real life" friendships, this was often hurtful.  Even as much as computers are a part of our world now, there will always be people who will minimize online friendships.  That's their opinion.  And their loss, too.

My life is so much richer, my knowledge and contacts so much broader, because I have been lucky enough to have such diverse and wonderful online friends.  Whether I ever meet them in person is hardly important.  You don't have to be standing in front of me to matter.  And that's MY opinion.