The Truth About Making Friends Online

I made real life friends on the Internet.

We always hear horror stories of your friends cousin’s brothers step son talking to someone on the Internet and something going terribly wrong. There’s a show about people who have online relationships who have never met in real life called Catfish. It usually ends with a meeting of people being disappointed by who they’ve been talking to for months or even years. Since I was young I recall the warnings of “stranger danger.”

But now we have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and whatever other app you prefer to use to connect with people. I met my friends through Twitter, through an anonymous account. It was a country account and I still haven’t told many people in my life about it today. But, it started by a simple message to another anonymous account about Miranda Lambert. I decided to do a speech on her so I figured I’d reach out to another anonymous account, which blossomed into a wonderful friendship.

Through this I have made friends in Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey and Minnesota.

I’ve visited my friend in Maryland multiple times. My friends have made the road trip to my house; they came to my brother’s graduation party and for a concert. They’ve met my extended family and my friends. I visited three of them in Nashville when they moved in together.

I found that people really aren’t as scary as the horror stories make them seem. Through the Internet I’ve made friends I probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with otherwise. Now, I’m not saying trust every person you meet on the Internet, but don’t completely shut the idea out either.

Friends you meet online are always there when you need to talk to them. Your conversations are usually meaningful because it’s how you get to know someone without actually spending lots of time with them, and you trust them because you know there is no one they can really tell your secrets to.

To me it doesn’t matter how we met, but the fact we have each other. The connection is the important thing and I feel like I’ve met good people with good hearts. I’ve only spent a limited amount of time with these people in person and they have my heart.

We see so many people in our daily lives we don’t really have a connection with, but these people you have to work on maintaining your relationship with and they are more of soul mates than anything.

There is no relationship that is better than another, but it’s all about how they make you feel and what you can do for them in return. No one wants to be friends with someone who only talks to you when it’s convenient for them or when they need something. You want someone who’s there for you because they enjoy you and the same goes for them.

In the past I’ve lied to people about how I met them, especially when we tell people where we’re all from. But not anymore, because there really is nothing wrong with it.

And why do some people think that make them not a real friend?

The friends I’ve met online mean more to me than some people that are in my life currently. They are real friends just like the people I hang out with every day. The only difference is when I want to hangout with them I have to make a trip out of it. It’s like a mini vacation to see people I care about. It’s also never boring because we’re always doing something fun when we’re together.

These friendships have blossomed into meeting other friends from them, and they’re all real and they’re all incredible. After all, the best friendships are the unexpected ones.