Imaginary friends
March 30th, 2007 by rivercrow
When I was young, I had imaginary friends. Not too unusual, especially for an imaginative kid raised in the sticks.
So I read the headline “Half of adult Brits have imaginary friends” with a great deal of interest. The article is actually about how many people have friends they’ve met over the Internet but whom they’ve never met in person.
These relationships are increasingly socially acceptable. Part of that’s fallout from workplace globalization. Teams span the planet now, easily–why not friendships? For people interested in niche areas like gaming or photography, online forums and groups are a fantastic way to meet other fanciers. Relationships naturally spring up, just as they would if the meeting happened in meat-space.
It’s nice to actually meet your imaginary friends, though, either through a phone conversation or in person. I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned in that talking on the phone or in person validates the time spent building a relationship.
Another point–the study was done in the UK, which has a more Introverted nature than the US. I wonder if the folks in the study are Introverts or Extraverts? Does that make a difference? Some of the closer online relationships I’ve formed have been with other Introverts…my guess is that we are indeed more comfortable with imaginary friends.
5 Responses to “Imaginary friends”
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I don’t get why people think it is strange. History is rife with people that communicated and had friendships through letter writing. Same thing. Hell, better now that you can send stuff instantaneously, pictures included.
True. I remember having a pen-pal in England who I had never met when I was a kid; my school friends thought that was a strange thing. By and large, these school friends also were not letter-writers and they were more outgoing than I was. Which returns me to my last point….
Yes, extraverts will have a hard time understanding.
I bet they’d think people that only talked on the phone could be great friends however.
I found out recently that talking to someone over personal messages and email doesn’t truely prepare you for meeting them. To me it was very odd that I’d spoken to this person about so many things and yet none of them came to mind as the face had changed. Plus I became very nervous and tense trying to convert to being able to read expressions and eyes from sentence structure and smileys.
As for introverts being more prone, this is probably true though it was my sister who was the letter writer. I don’t like such things and would probably never have even gone onto the internet to speak to people if my job wasn’t so boring and have such relaxed internet usage. I’m glad I did though.
The question is, do you ever hide from your online possy like me or is it comfy for you to be available pretty much whenever they feel like talking?
Do I hide?
Yes.
Mostly because I don’t want them to feel bad that I can’t talk because I am busy with something.
I seem to have little online time away from work lately, so it is as if I have dropped off the face of the earth except for the odd email.