Are online friends 'real' friends?

[NaiaRulez]

You need to be sure before anything.
Think that maybe people can lie about their identity; An user can say he's 14 when he's 37 in real life.
Take for example Facebook, I reject friend request from unknown people 'cause It's dangerous. People do bullying on social networks, mostly Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but ciber-bullying is worst than real life bullying. You can post a photo of a girl's breasts to Facebook or another social network; a lot of people can see this. And if you delete that photo, internet will archive it and there's no going back.

Be sure about this before anything, it can happen anything.

[Carl]

[quote="TheSassyNala"]but ciber-bullying is worst than real life bullying.[/quote]
Really? Cyber bullies can't beat you to death. And you can get away from them by getting off the website. Real life bullying is often inescapable, as the people are often a part of your everyday life, sometimes even living in your house. I would much prefer to be bullied online than in real life. I have been stuck in a house for 8 years with a bully and it's the worst possible thing in the world.

Also, people IRL can lie about their identity too. The internet is no different from IRL, except that it hides the physical appearance of a person (which can be remedied with Skype). If you're terrified of strangers online and think you can't trust them, then you'd better be constantly looking over your shoulder IRL too, because people will be people, no matter how you meet them or interact with them.

And most people are jerkwads. Online or offline. That's a fact.

[SlayerOfLight]

lol I remember in the past we discussed this subject as well. But I gotta agree with Julie, real life bullies can do alot more to you and your personal property than cyber bullies. The only thing they can pretty much do are leaving rude comments, to which I'd say ''sticks and stones''.

[UncoordinatedPisces]

Cyber bullying is awful and no one should have to go through it, but I'm going to have to say that having someone insult you to your face and have the threat of physical harm is worse.

Anyway, I'll always say it, my online friends mean so much to me; they are just like real life friends. When you cross the Skype video call barrier than I'd say you've formed a pretty good friendship lmao.

[FlipMode]

I mean cyber bullying is really just an extension of IRL bullying really. Back when I was in school online bullying wasn't really a thing because we all had AOL Dial Up and social media was unheard of so it seems like just a modern day evolution of bullying to me. I'd put them in the same basket.
Online bullying can't really be stopped though, IRL bullying can.

As for friends: Well here's an interesting story for ya: I was once very active on a Kingdom Hearts Forum. I had a friend on there who I talked to a lot, I knew his name was Matthew and he knew mine was Tom, we played games online and chatted a lot (text chats because video and voice weren't really a thing back then).
About a year later I went to college in a nearby town and made a friend in my class called Matthew.
A couple months after that I got bored and set my location on that forum to Brighton while filling in my profile, my friend on there, Matthew, sent me a PM, I still have it, it says "Dude! You live in Brighton! I live in Worthing!" (I was in Worthing college at the time). I knew he was in college too.

Basically to cut a long story short it turned out, I made friends with this guy online for about a year, then made friends with him again IRL at college and then later on found out that they were the same person. It was the craziest coincidence ever. We're still friends to this day and laugh about it some times.
I mean there's meeting online friends IRL and all but being friends with this guy online and IRL at the same time and not knowing it really put into perspective to me:

Online friends are humans, there's no disambiguation between the two as far as I'm concerned. Its still a person and making friends online is the same as IRL. You talk about stuff, find common interests, share life together and learn and grow. Like Buffy getting me into writing and books. Now I'm an author. Similarly I've gotten people into cycling who love it so much they go on holidays just to go cycling in the mountains and stuff.

Oh dear! I'm sorry for wasting your time thinking you care enough about what I'm saying to read all that! I had no idea how long this post was getting!