e-Friendships

I have often wondered about e-friendships. This new category of friends first emerged with internet chat relays or IRC applications that we used so avidly in the nineties. I remember going to internet cafes and coughing out money to chat with someone from either exotic Indonesia or entertaining Paris, or staid India in one of the chat rooms so elegantly set up by the servers of mIRC.
Over the years, these chat rooms bloomed all over the net, and one had Yahoo chat rooms, MSN chat rooms, porn chat rooms and what not. I can clearly recall the language of these chats ... the first chats would invariably be a/s/l ...(age, sex, location). Most of these chats would continue benignly; some would flower into great friendships ... I am still in touch with a few of those friends; yet others would veer into prohibited territories of pornography, causing me to exit such chats and to block such users.

As I grew more comfortable with the internet and acquired my own computers, so also internet evolved; more things became available, and over time, I stopped participating in chats. Then, in the early years of the new millenium, social networking happened, and e-friendships bloomed like never before. Facebook games allowed me to interact with names ... names that helped me to harvest a crop in Farmville, or cook a dish in Cafe World, or feed an animal in Zoo World, or play games with people in Mindjolt, or other similar apps. My friends-circle grew so hugely that I soon crossed the 1000-friends level. Then, again, my interest in cooperative games declined, but the friends stuck with me. I can say confidently that at least 200 of my games friends are still communicating with me ... either wishing me on my important days, or "liking" my statuses, or pictures, or posts ... or sharing my status on their own pages, etc.

One other medium helped me garner friends from all over the world, and that was the world of writing.com. I now have really good and close e-friends from almost all continents of the world. And I am proud of each one of them.

Today, the youth is moving to mobile apps like whatsapp, and forming groups on whatsapp is once again engineering the making of new friends. I am a part of many academic and social groups on Whatsapp, and have made several new friends as a result of this.

This, in as few words as was possible, is what e-friendships mean to me. They are no less, and perhaps more, than real world friends, as they are always around to share in your happiness, commisserate with you in your misery, helping you to lift your spirits when you are down, tempering your enthusiasm when it is wrongly directed, and advising you on matters that not even your closest family members can give you a clear perspective on.

A big thank you to all my internet friends ... er, e-friends!

Friendship

In my 48 years, 7 months and 10 days on this planet, I think I must have met, on a rough estimate, at least 200,000 people, right? So how is it that one strikes the right chord of friendship with so few? I guess I can count off the names of my close friends on the fingers of my hands! I know thousands of people right now, in real time, and have a passing acquaintance of another 8-10 thousand, but when I sit back and think about how many bridges remain to be crossed before I can say that person X is no longer a known moiety, no longer a passing acquaintance, no longer a good friend, but a close friend ...and I have to conclude that seldom, if ever, will all those bridges be crossed and a close friend added to my list.

What, then, are the ingredients that go towards fostering a close friendship? Ask a hundred people, and you will likely get a hundred answers. To think off the top of my mind, I can think of the following:
-proximity
-attitudinal match
-trust
-ability and opportunity to interact
-comfort in each others' presence
-mutual acceptance of pluses and minuses of each other
-tolerance of each others' bad or nasty habits/behaviour
-enjoying each others' conversations
-keeping each others' secrets
-lending shoulders to cry upon

I guess the list is endless, as you can see!

Aside of the physical world's friendships, the internet has added a fourth dimension to the discussion: we make friends so freely over the net, and what do we have to judge the other person by, except for the way they write/chat/interact? Nothing. Pictures and photos need not be genuine. Nor blogs, nor profiles, nor locations, or even sex. Thus, our friendships on the net hang by a thin, easily breakable thread of belief and faith - in the friend, in our own self and in God - or cyber God if you will.

Having said all this, I can say that once a thread of friendship is formed, maintaining it is even more difficult ... and taking it to the next, higher level ...even more so. We mostly maintain relationships at the same level of comfort, but we never try to "test" our friendships to see if the friend does come in "good" when the need arises. A mere statement that "a friend in need is a friend indeed" is okay for writing a school essay, but do we really put pressure on our so-called friends to see who our "real" friends are?

To do this, we need to sometimes create "crises" and call up our friends and see their level of response/reciprocation. To give you an example: announce to all your friends by email, phone or SMS that your car has stalled at ..... location (the location needs to be *inconvenient* for the friends to reach) and could they help by coming to you and fetching you ... or rendering some other form of help to help you extricate yourself from this situation.

Now, sit back and enjoy. Over 90% of those you call will feign that they are too busy to come and pick you up, or cluck in mock sympathy. Around 5 % will show genuine concern, but will not go beyond, say, giving you the number of the local police station or towing agency or Automobile Association etc.

Only the last 5% will discuss the nitty-gritty of the problem and offer to come and pick you up.

They are, in my opinion, a few notches higher than the remaining 95% whom you contacted.

That does not mean that they are the only true friends you have. Someone from the 95% discussed above still may be your true friend, but how will you know that? Therefore, keep creating "crisis" situations from time to time, till you are sure who your real friends are.

Did I make sense to you? Will you try this method to test your friends? Do write back and let me know!