Virtually speaking

My friend Jeanne wrote about having a first face-to-face meeting with someone she’d met through her blog. That got me to thinking about the nature of friendship and how my definition of that has changed.

I met two of my very best friends—Angie and John—a decade ago through an online forum about an online game we all played. At the time we played on the different servers, so we didn’t interact through the game, we only knew each other through that forum. And yet the three of us became friends. Years later, I did end up transferring my character to the server they played on but our friendship was already well established.

In 2003, Kent and I drove out to Colorado for Angie’s wedding (which is when I first met her face-to-face). A month later and the day after we got married, we flew to Calgary and spent the night with John and his wife (again the first face-to-face-meeting) before heading up to Lake Louise for our honeymoon. A few years ago the six of us spent a summer vacation at Yellowstone, camping and checking out the sights.

We’ve been there for each other a lot of the normal major life changes: divorce, cross-country moves (yes, plural), floods, unemployment more than a few times, job issues and so on. Just like any face-to-face friendship, we annoy each other, get in arguments (one of us loves to debate), tell each other when things have gone down the tubes, and get encouragement and support too. And yet I never talk to them on the phone and haven’t seen them in the real world since that Yellowstone vacation. Practically all our communication is by email or instant message. Heck none of us even play that original game anymore.

I count them among the very best of my friends. I figure after 10 years, they know all about my personality flaws and they are still my friends. That’s a pretty good definition of friendship.

Do you have virtual friendships also?