I think that says it all - I've met many internet people over the years, and they've all been the most incredible, 'three-dimensional' people. The internet really opens up the opportunity to meet people you can relate to on every level - people you'd never have gotten in touch with otherwise.
I wouldn't make that distinction. I met most of my "real life" friends at various events. Going to something like a Python meetup in your city is just as much "by interest" as visiting a #python irc channel. And I met one of my best friends on irc by chance (we have no interests in common).
About five years ago online dating was looked down upon but since then i have been seeing lot of people getting married to people they found online.
Same way finding interesting friends is best done 1-1, as its rhe depth not the breadth of the relationship that matters.
Its the same reason i use [and started] http://letslunch.com and have met over a dozen great people over lunch, Because frankly i don't have time to goto meetups which happens on a specific day and on specific time, wheres in conferences/networking events people are always ought to meet as many people as possible and even while chatting without you, they are peeking over your shoulder to see who they are going to talk next.
Have you thought about opening letslunch in other cities? Whether it be doing it yourself, having others do it or open sourcing the code. It should work equally well in certain other cities or regions.
It used to be looked down upon because there was a connotation that you just couldn't make it in your own circles, but eventually people figured out there were real pros.
I met my wife this way. Both had accounts on a LiveJournal-like site, both gravitated to the same circle of friends, mutual interest became more and now she's been my best friend for 7 years. We've met others (on our honeymoon driving through Houston, on our move to Baltimore when we passed through Ohio, going to a wedding of two other friends who we met this way and who met each other that way).
They are the deepest friendships. You don't become friends over the Internet without good communication - everything else is secondary.
My experiences absolutely confirm this. I met my wife on LiveJournal, and we were only together in person for a week before we got married (and later she moved to the UK).
When the bulk of your relationship is done over the internet, it absolutely forces you to learn how to communicate, from the start and continuously throughout the relationship.
I'm quite certain that if 'normal' people had to do this there'd be a lot less marriage breakdowns - and possibly a lot less marriages that were never really going to last.
I've never been overly weirded out by meeting people from the Internet (going to Gooncon came close), but I will say it was definitely strange the first time some completely random stranger came up to me in a bar and said "You're Jarin, right? I follow you on Twitter!" Strange in a good way though, I bought the guy a beer :)
I'd never go to somewhere like Gooncon, too high a possibility of meeting people who take everything on SA seriously in real life.
Do you ever get a sense of The Truman Show going to cons and meetups with people from the internet? I'd imagine it's really strange to find all these random people who know your name and a shit-ton of information about you at these events.
It's not weird (or at least it never was for me), because you know all those people too! The point of the article was that people "on the internet" are real people too.
I think shii's point was more about 'lurkers' showing up and trying to talk to you like they know you, even though they've never even communicated with you online or offline.
It's not really that different from going to tech meetups or events and meeting people you talk to on HN or Twitter. I guess you just have to accept the reality that if you spend a lot of time online, your persona exists as much on the Internet as it does in real life.
Was gooncon as horrifying in real life as it appeared to someone looking at the photos? I'm talking about the first one or two, I stopped reading SA just after that.
Thinking about it, weren't there only two? Didn't lowtax say something like, "let us never speak of this again"?
I went to the one in New Orleans, I forget which year it was but I think it was the 3rd one? Lowtax wasn't there, but I think a couple of the admins were.
It was probably 90% super awkward nerds trying to "hilariously" ask my black friend (also an SA poster) if he stole radios for a living, and 10% people who were chill and fun to hang out with. The two groups separated pretty quickly. Although we did take one of the super awkward nerds under our wing, which was pretty fun.
I love this article and the stories it contains. I have the same distaste about the word "networking" and what it seems to imply these days, which I think has limited me a bit with making friends in certain circles (ex: entrepreneurship). I don't seem to have a problem with becoming friends from other online communities, though. Half of my "real life" friends are from offroading/truck communities where I've been mildly participating for only the past year.
I think I'm hesitant about "networking" within the entrepreneurial community because of the "Maybe we can help eachother out" sorta thing mentioned by the author. It seems like networking in this way is merely for personal gain. As a result, I have exactly zero entrepreneurial-minded friends.
That being said, anybody want to be friends? Seriously.
I met my husband on the internet, back in 1996, when it was considered unusual and weird to do so. We're about to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.
I met one of my very best friends and business partners online in '97. We talk nearly every single day and have worked closely together for years. We co-own a company together. - We've never actually met in person. We'll be doing that for the first time in 14 years next weekend.
I have other very close friends that have started as online friendships, as well.
I haven't found a big difference in the quality of friends met online vs in person.
What has been different is how well those friendships persist. Finishing school, changing jobs, moving to a new city or neighborhood, or simply changing schedules can put you out of touch with "real life" friends. But I can still log on to the same websites, and my online friends are still there. Such a change might even put me closer to them.
I've always enjoyed meeting my Net friends - starting in the 90's, when I still did business trips; I'd try to find somebody to take out to lunch on my company's dime. Ha.
I've met lots of people from online. Some networking events have their invite lists on Facebook. If so, I look up the people attending and message the ones I have the most in common with. It turns out that these people become the best friends I make at the meetups!
Most of my best friends I met through the internet, or through friends I met through the internet. Specifically, the internet introduced me to one largely internet-assembled social circle that did the rest.
Internet friends - met by interest
I think that says it all - I've met many internet people over the years, and they've all been the most incredible, 'three-dimensional' people. The internet really opens up the opportunity to meet people you can relate to on every level - people you'd never have gotten in touch with otherwise.