Online Friends and a More Confident Me

When starting a new life at a college far away from home, one of the biggest concerns students have, myself included, is how they’re going to fit in and make friends. To start over in a completely new environment full of uncertainty can be detrimental to one’s self-image, which is ironic as self-confidence is something helpful to have in making friends. Keeping in touch with old friends can help, but those relationships have changed because they have become long distance. When I moved here, I was helped in that I had friends that I only knew online because our relationship didn’t change at all. I still had my computer, and all of the resources that came with real friends were just a click away.

I have met some of my closest friends through websites like YouTube and FanFiction.net. These people know only my first name and the time zone that I live in (and that’s all I know about them), but we’ve still managed to develop friendships founded on our similar interests in books and television shows. We’re all especially pop culture-oriented people, and it’s really fun for all of us to be able to discuss things that we’re passionate about in a way we might not be able to with our real friends who have different interests. We know and find each other through “vids” on YouTube. Vids are music videos made from clips of movies and TV shows. It’s not a common hobby, so it’s only natural that a close online community develops around it. In this community I’ve become especially close to two girls. One is Emily, my first online friend, and the other is Alyssa, my “best” online friend. We first became friends by commenting on vids and following each other on Twitter. These comments led to messaging and discussions, which gradually developed into comfortable relationships.

What I appreciate perhaps the most about having online friends is that they are far less judgmental than real ones. In real life, we are always subjected to judgments about us based on our appearance. Like my real friends, I feel like I have certain obligations to them, like when I’m working on YouTube projects with my online friends, but because everything we do together we do purely for fun, arguments are very rare. It is also helpful to have friends interested in the same kinds of television shows as I am. I grew up in a household where watching too much television was frowned upon, but the more intellectual discussions about shows that I had with online friends helped me think about my own interests in a much more positive and less self-deprecating light. They encouraged and fueled my interest in television and writing and video editing rather than let it be a something I could hate about myself. In addition to this encouragement, I’ve grown to feel comfortable enough with them to trust them with more personal stories, even some that I’ve been unable to share with my real life friends.

One example of a time when my online friends held me together was when my parents got divorced. This past May, less than two weeks before my high school graduation, my mom announced that she was moving out. Because of the timing, I felt like it would be unfair for me to seek comfort from my school friends who were graduating with me. It was supposed to be a time for us to all be happy and excited together, and I didn’t want to burden them with the task of comforting me. So I turned to my online friends, all of whom comforted me by letting me talk through all of my feelings. Emily’s parents had gone through a very messy divorce when she was young, so she gave me advice for dealing with it. Alyssa hadn’t gone through anything like it, but she offered to pray for me and made me a playlist of both of our favorite funny and cute Youtube videos to help cheer me up. They’ve also been true friends in good times as well as bad; for instance, we always take the time to remember each other’s birthdays.

The two best birthday gifts I received when I turned eighteen this past June (apart from the iPhone my parents got me) were the two videos Alyssa and Emily made me. It always feels good to receive gifts from friends on your birthday, but making vids is an extremely long and tiring (though enjoyable) process, so it was especially wonderful and touching to know that they put so much thought and effort into doing something like that just for my birthday. The vid Alyssa made was using clips of Rose and Amy from Doctor Who (a favorite show of mine that I first introduced to her) to the song “Blinding” by Florence and the Machine. Emily is an extremely prolific vidder who follows several television shows. She chose to make a video to the song “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles with Jim and Pam from The Office and Ned and Chuck from Pushing Daisies. These are two shows and couples that I absolutely love, but that she doesn’t make vids about that often, so it meant something that she put in the extra effort into doing something she knew I’d love. Other online friends that I’ve talked to have said that birthday vids are among their favorite online traditions. Even when it’s not my birthday and nothing “special” going on in my life, it is really helpful for me to have this non-judgmental support group behind me.

I would like to add a disclaimer that I realize the Internet can be a very dangerous place, and that it is never advisable to give out personal information such as your full name, location, and phone number to people you have never met in person. However, I have never felt like my friendships with people I have met online would have been affected one way or the other by this information. I also think that it’s extremely important to have real friends. The new friends that I’ve made here at Scripps and the ones I’ve kept in touch with from back home mean everything to me, and I don’t know how I would have survived my first few months of college without their support. But my online friendships are a part of who I am, and I have grown to view those parts of me in a positive light.