Continuing my project of crowd-sourced blog topics, today’s suggestion was via @dutchface. I like it for two reasons: One, it’s an interesting topic. Two, it’s a list, and everyone knows that lists are good blog posts to do, because they are easy and everyone likes to read them.
- Internet friends are always available. Real-life friends have things like “jobs” and “families” which might make them not there when you are bored and need entertainment. There’s always an internet friend available, as long as you have a data connection.
- Real-life friends require a synchronous relationship. Hanging out with your real-life friends means you need to both be available at the same time. Internet friends can be interacted with via chat or blog post, which means you don’t have to both be dedicated to the interaction at the exact same time.
- Internet friends respect multi-tasking. If you’re having a good time with your internet buddy, you can be watching the season premier of Breaking Bad at the same time. Whereas with your real-life friend you’re sitting and waiting for a table at Big Star and would get looked at funny by both your friend and the other customers if you started streaming Netflix on your iPad.
- Internet friends give you permanent validation. If you tell your real-life friend something funny, he may laugh. But that’s only good right them. Whereas if I write a hilarious blog post, all of the kudos and lolz from my internet friends are always there to re-read, when I’m feeling crappy about myself.
- Internet friends are lower maintenance. With a real-life friend, if you stop hanging out for a while, due to work overload or something else, you will start to forget that you are friends with that person and call them up less frequently. Whereas your internet friends are always there on your Gchat buddy list, just waiting for you to turn green.
- Real-life friends encourage you to wear pants in all interactions with them. Enough said.
- Your internet friends can be international. It’s a lot harder to hang out with a buddy who lives in England IRL, but you can totally be internet friends with him whenever the two of you want.
- Internet friends probably don’t know where you live. This may not be an issue for you, but it might. I can only see this as an advantage.
- Internet friends will not ask you to help them move. See # 7 and #8 above.
- Internet friends can be muted on Twitter. Real life friends keep talking even when you are sick of hearing about 50 Shades of Grey.
What’s YOUR favorite thing about your Internet Friends? Tell me in the comments!