Having just had my 40th
birthday, I was thinking about the friends I’ve had in life. They
can be divided roughly into three groups:
Group 1: Childhood and teenage
years (including school)
Group 2: Post-teen until the
present day
Group 3: Internet friends
Maybe
I’m not the most typical example, because I go out socialising less frequently
than the average person, but in the present day just about everyone I’d call a
friend belongs in either group 2 or group 3. I have not retained any of my
friends from group 1, except one or two who I’ve caught up with online who are
now group 3 friends.
All
my closest real life friends are in group 2, and I love them all dearly. But
the people I spend most time interacting with are those in group 3, my Internet
friends. That’s in part because the online world has become (for many of us)
such a prominent medium of interaction, but also because the Internet brings to
our lives interesting, intelligent, diverse, curious and imaginative
minds all over the world that we probably wouldn't otherwise meet.
The Internet also enables conversations to take shape in a
more a la carte way. If at a particular time no one in your pub crowd wants to
talk about event horizons, epigenetics, the theories of Thomas Malthus or the
music of David Bowie, then starting conversations about those things will be
met with lukewarm reaction. Whereas online, you can just throw these things out
there, and anyone who wants to join conversations will do so, and anyone that
does not can sit out.
Real life friends give you the opportunity to look into each
other's eyes, which is one of the most powerful things two people can do. But
there's this strange aspect to it, where there are things you may well tell a
complete stranger (embarrassing things or medical things perhaps) that you wouldn't
necessarily tell a close friend, while at the same time there are special
things you have with close friends that you only have with those friends. Perhaps
that's a little part of what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he once remarked
that "A friend may well be reckoned
the masterpiece of nature".
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| A wife is a man's best friend |
