Recently I had lunch with a friend I met on Twitter. And yes, we really are friends. We happen to have met on Twitter but we are now friends in real life. We connected through Twitter, met a few times at events and became friends. It doesn't happen often for me but it does happen.
Mostly I am on Twitter to join the conversation, get access to some amazing people and network with professionals in social media. Sometimes you connect with someone and a friendship begins and Twitter will be credited as the one that introduced you. But mostly this online connection will stay just a fun and friendly way to connect with a whole bunch of cool people.
What concerns me as of late is I see people confusing their online friends with having friends in real life. Social media can facilitate real life friendships but the truth is that you can not truly be friends with someone from the other side of a screen writing in 140 character bursts. It is simply not the same.
Some people are going to argue but I know this is true. I see people making this mistake and confusing the two all the time. I see people who are lonely in their personal lives or feeling lost or craving relationships making their way online to find them. It is easier and the risks seem low. You feel that you can avoid rejection or put yourself "out there" more easily or that you are more in control. You can create a persona or connect with others and put your best face forward. The problem is, real friendships are based on a "warts and all" sort of deal. In social media you only know what the person choses to put out there. When you are just a blip out of thousands of blips in a person's day it is hard to do more than skim the surface of their lives.
A friend of mine told me about someone with tens of thousands of followers on Twitter who told her that he received thousands of Birthday wishes on his special day. They kept coming in, one after another, tweeted and retweeted all day long. But no matter how many Birthday tweets he got he still sat at home alone with no one to celebrate with. Where were all his "friends" now?
I had a Twitter friend for more than a year. We connected on occasion. I laughed at her jokes, admired her wisdom and respected her professionally. She was one I followed a bit more closely online because I felt a connection with her. We had never met in real life but through her comments and insights I felt I knew her.
I was wrong. Very, very wrong. I was floored to find out that my Twitter pal was in deep trouble. She was struggling with alcoholism and her life was falling apart. Her light hearted tone and witty insights, her sweet posts about her kids and her loving marriage all manufactured to cover up for a family long gone and years of failed attempts at sobriety and treatment.
I learned this because another online friend received an email from this woman's sister begging her to help get her sister offline and into treatment. She felt that her relationships online were what was keeping her in denial. She was living in a dream world. Within 24hrs of this email her profile was removed from Twitter and we never heard from or about her again. We would have had no idea how to reach her anyway. She had been a part of our Twitter world for a while yet, after a few days, people stopped asking where she went.
Of course, this is an extreme situation and most of us don't have secrets like this but it does illustrate my point. I really do believe that wonderful friendships can start on social media but, until you meet someone in real life and build a real relationship with them and get to know them in their real world, you simply can't know them.
There is also the issue of expectations. Many people go online to find something they don't have in real life. On Twitter especially I have seen some desperate people. I have seen deep sadness and loneliness online. I have seen people comforted through community and others who take every "unfollow" as a rejection of themselves. I have received messages from people angry at feeling left out from some event or hurt that they were not included in a lunch. People who depend on these online relationships as if they were real life friendships. But they are not.
I am on Twitter to connect, mostly professionally, but on occasion I have the good fortune of making a new friend. However, if I depended on my online world to be my only world I can't imagine how lonely and empty I would feel.
What about you? Do you agree that online friends aren't the same as real life friends?
Good post and very true.
Twitter is kind of a strange place where you get just a wee 140-character glimpse into someone's life. I think it's typically hard to actually KNOW a person from that...but, there are so many other social media outlets to get to really know a person better—facebook, blogs etc.
Sometimes I really feel like I know someone from INSIDE MY COMPUTER and I know we would be friends in real life...and then I meet them, and BAM, best friends for life. It happens. It has happened to me. I have some of my best best best friends because of my computer. But, then again, it's not JUST twitter. we have built a relationship through twitter+, I'd call it. Twitter plus other aspects. websites, emails, skype, blogs, twitter, facebook.
I don't know if you can really know someone through just twitter...but I'd still consider some people FRIENDS. It's just a different kind of friendship.
I totally agree, Ali. And really that is what I was trying to say. It IS different. Sometimes it leads to amazing things but it is just a beginning.
Really good and insightful post. I've some people IRL that I talked with online a lot...and was disappointed that they weren't as fun/witty/interesting/good looking/etc... as they seemed when they write. I can only assume people have been disappointed by real-life Sarah vs. online Sarah.
I think the beauty of online is that we can craft an image that we like and think others will like too. We can censor and delete parts of our life that we don't like (or don't wish to share). We can spend 45 minutes coming up with a funny line that we could never think of off the cuff in real life.
I really agree with Ali- I'd call some people I talk with a lot online "friends" but it's a different kind of friendship. Real, true connections are possible, but not without real life connections being made as well.
Great post, Jen.
I have made some amazing, real, true friends from a twitter introduction, but there have also been times where I *thought* I knew (and clicked) with somebody online, only to find out that we were actually very different in the most important ways.
And to be honest, I don't need everybody I follow to be my friend. I love meeting online acquaintances and am grateful to have the opportunity to do so often, but there are some people are simply more tolerable in 140 characters or less. (C'mon, everybody has a *few* of those)
I completely agree with you Jen. I too have met some amazing people through Twitter first and then in real life, and am so happy they are in my life. I have Twitter friends also, but have never met them. I know who I can turn to in my time of need - my real life, in person, in the flesh, friends.
Some of my strongest connections have been made through the internet.
When we were going through the process of getting Cuyler diagnosed - the internet was, at times, my lifeline.
Nobody in real life could understand what we were going through.
Nobody in real life could understand the roller coaster of emotions we were on. The ups the downs.
Nobody in real life knew what GFCF meant - that changed our lives.
As far as twitter - some nights I can spend hours tweeting back and forth with people. I also will admit that a sometimes a small part of me wonders if I'm the twitter wallflower....why didn't they reply to my tweet? Why do I only have 400 followers? Am I witty enough?
I also have to remember that my tweeps have names and not just handles. Like when I met @JenGPhotog for the first time. I had to remember that she was "Jen"
But the flip side is when a celeb replies - OMG! Lisa Rinna (she replied and RT'd), Denise Richards, Candace Cameron Bure, Val Bure, Frankie Flowers, Jennifer Valentyne, Dina Pugliese and the most exciting to me - Kelly Ripa's DM!!
Oh and Samantha Harris didn't like what I tweeted about her the other day. That was embarrassing...
Here are a few random thoughts Jen:
I am fortunate enough to have the closeness I need in my real life - twitter and blogging - just enhance it.
To it's credit, I find people are more deliberate and supportive and polite on twitter (public persona and all) though I do sometimes question the genuineness of peoples tweets when no actions are needed to support their sentiments)
But would I be able to call any of tweeps up in the middle of the night if I needed desperately to talk? Nope.
Living remotely, I really have relied on twitter and by extension, all of you, to share stories, good and bad, gather information, swap resources, giggle, drink, eat and slurp coffee with. Are all of the people I chat with on twitter *real* friends? Oh goodness, no....but it does certainly fill a gap at times. That said, a few have merged into real life friendships and I suspect (and hope) that will continue.
The flip side is that I have chatted and met someone through twitter who I was comfortable calling a friend, and realized (too late) that it was not reciprocated - so just like in real life, everybody's expectations and experiences are different.
I do think that twitter is attractive to a certain type of person - you hit it on the head when sometimes people are looking to fill something missing in their lives...but that's true of most things,with moderation and with realistic expectations this doen't need to be problematic.
Great post Jen!!
I agree with you. I think we all need to go online with the understanding that we are only getting a very small part of the picture. We're getting the edited version of thoughts and opinions, which is not always authentic.
That said, I think the connections we make online ARE valid. When grieving, when coping with major life changes, when struggling or growing, when excited and streaming tears of joy - There is so much value, I think, in sharing those experiences with the whole wide world. My real life friends are the ones who pull me up out of the dark, when I fall, for sure. But that online experience of "I'm not the only one!" is important, and remarkable. Great post, Jen :)
I certainly don't feel like all people on twitter are my friends...but I do have some social media relationships that have grown over the years (yes, YEARS) and I feel very close to those people. I'm happy to call them 'friend.'
I am not on Twitter but one of my closest friends really only speaks to me through texts. She is a texting user and just doens't pick up the phone for a real conversation. By phoning me to see if we are on for coffee, you will also hear that I'm going away for the day tomorrow, I slept amazing last night and thank goodness, all is well in my house right now. And if things weren't so good, you'd hear about that too. Nothing can replace a phone call in my opinion.
Oh, great post, Jen! I was considering this very same stuff just the other day. I feel bad for people who "rely" on this form of social connection... nothing can replace a person's face or voice. :)
Jen
This is a fabulous post. I really like twitter. It's fun and dynamic and enticing to be able to connect to so many interesting people. BUT. I regularly disconnect.
Some weeks I'm barely on at all. I don't tweet much on weekends. I just finished a grueling three-month extra project that I took on in addition to my deadline-driven job and I found I was using twitter as a distraction. Basically I was goofing off, tweeting (and blogging) when I should have been writing for my job -- because the workload was stressful. So I stopped tweeting for a while. I needed to set priorities and focus on reality.
I have a very full life with lots of very real (and big) responsibilities and friends and relationships. There's no replacement for that. Nor do I want there to be. And I agree with you. You don't really know people until you spend considerable time with them face to face, warts and all.
(But, still, I sure do like a lot of people on twitter. : )
Yes, I feel it is possible to meet someone on line and be freinds, with them, i have meet many on my fb and twitter and have meet some of them in person, if i traveled there it was exciting, ,Love the post, good luck and love the page
Hey. Thank you for posting this article. It helped me very-much.
I must say, its worth it!,i'llcheck back asap,cheers