A few recent events got me to thinking about friendship, community and relationships in this day and age. What kind of relationships are created online? Are they "real" relationships? How strong are friendships formed via the Internet? What does community mean in this online world we've created?
Recently, we lost one of our Kossack friends. Few of us had the pleasure of meeting Julie Waters in "real life" yet most of us knew her via Daily Kos or her blog. We shared our lives with her and she shared hers with us. We were graced with her creativity, wit, intelligence and talent... all of it online for most of us. Through wires and chips and thin air. Bytes and bits and ones and zeroes were her way of sharing with us. What kind of relationship was this? Can we truly call it friendship?
We have created a new way of relating to one another with the Web. These relationships are a relatively new phenomenon for us humans. It is in our nature to want to define them, to name them. This is an elusive quest. But if we are going to do so, it is best that we begin at the beginning:
friend — n
1. a person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty; an intimate
2. an acquaintance or associate
3. an ally in a fight or cause; supporter
4. a fellow member of a party, society, etc
5. a patron or supporter: a friend of the opera
6. be friends to be friendly (with)
7. make friends to become friendly (with)
It is interesting that none of the definitions of
friend specifies a physical relationship. Before the Internet age, that was a given: one had to be in physical proximity to another to befriend them. When we began to communicate over long distances it became possible to be a pen pal, to get to know someone via paper and pen. While effective, it was slow. By the time one received a letter from their friend, anything could have happened. Letters are capable of conveying information but not with expediency.
Which brings us to the Internet. The history of the Internet began, as many modern conveniences did, with a military application. This involved remote use of computers by operators in diverse locations. Sending messages was "not an important motivation for a network of scientific computers" according to one of the Arpanet developers. However, this network did not involve a connection between many different computer networks, so it should only be considered a proto-internet.
There are several different origin stories about the Internet as we know it. The groups that sprang up - Usenet and the like - covered nearly every conceivable interest. But they were text-based, often difficult to navigate and not very user-friendly. This is not to say that they were not a form of community or that no friendships were formed through them. There were and they did. But it was the creation of GUIs - graphical user interfaces - that made the Web more interesting and easier to navigate, opening it up to the computer-challenged (some would say this was a bad thing). With the addition of browsers, it became easy to find people with similar interests anywhere in the world. And the Internet as we know it became an everyday part of our lives.
I first began to communicate online soon after my daughter was born in 1991. Our room mate was a computer programmer so we had access to the Web from the time he moved in the previous year. I explored Usenet and joined a few groups but I felt out of my depth. Then, in 1993, I joined AOL and began to get comfortable online. Say what you will about AOL but in the early 90s it was an easy and friendly way to join the online revolution. Those GUIs really opened the Web up to more people. I became a Moderator (called Community Leaders there) on the Politics and Religion Forum. I led chats, mostly in the Religion area and made my first online friends. In 1997 I met several of these friends in "real life" when we met up at Disneyland. Out of this group I remain in contact with only one. Somehow he was the only one who was as "real" as he seemed to be online.
In 2004 I joined the Stephen King Forum. I "met" many nice people there but it was when I was tagged as a Beta tester for the new website that I formed my first true friendships with strangers. The group numbered 12 including the Moderator and Webmaster, and we were spread out all over the globe: from New Zealand to Ireland to Canada, from New York to Georgia to Idaho. We shared everything with each other - we've seen the birth of 5 babies and the loss of several parents (the first thing I did when I found out about my Mom was to let them know). We called ourselves Ka-Tet, after a word Stephen King created for his Dark Tower books. Ka, in the books, is something akin to destiny, fate and/or guidance. A Ka-Tet is a group of people brought together by Ka: "We are one from many." Ka-Tet means "family." And this group has become a family.
When my husband, daughter and I visited the UK in 2009, we met up with the Irish member of our Tet in Belfast. We hugged and cried when we came face-to-face, like long-lost relatives. She and her family became part of ours seamlessly. We also met up with a few people I had "met" through the Genesis Forum. All of these strangers - for, when you get right down to it, that's what we really were to one another - were, without exception, friendly, generous and welcoming. Whether they were taking us on a tour, opening their home to us or taking us to a favorite dinner spot, we felt like we had a kinship. Even though the only thing we really knew about one another was that we all liked the same band we were able to deepen our relationships and call one another friend.
Last week I was blessed to attend the premiere of Stephen King's musical Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County. Half of the Tet was able to make the journey and I met them face-to-face for the first time and, yes, there were tears and hugs and a feeling of re-discovering relatives. Just as it had been with our Irish Tet-mate, we clicked. These people, with whom I have shared so much of my life, were indeed like family. We are Ka-Tet.
The most recent community I have become a part of is that at Bubba's Bar & Grill - Neil Peart's forum. I met these people through my love of Rush and admiration of and gratitude to Mr. Peart. Recently, I was made a Moderator there and I'm thrilled to be able to repay Bubba even in this small way. I'm making some great friends there and I hope to meet many of them this summer and during the next tour (starts in September - W00T!). I have high hopes for our face-to-face meetings and expect more tears, hugs and feelings of Tet.
Then there is this place. I joined Daily Kos in 2007 after hearing about it on Countdown. It took awhile but I gained TU status and - hopefully - have carved out a spot here. When I began to read the Community diaries it dawned on me that what we have here is much more than just a political blog. This was proven during the recent subscription drive. The denotation of Community Diary is no exaggeration - these are the diaries where we see the strength of the relationships we have formed here. It's frivolous, like a pootie diary, where we can share a laugh. It's a chance to vent and blow off steam in WYFP. It's being comforted and supported in The Grieving Room. Or it may be a chance to help a fellow Kossack with Sara R's quilt diaries or answer a cry for help from a community member who can't cover rent or a medical bill. We are given opportunities every day here on DK to examine what an online relationship means to us.
So what do we make of this new kind of relationship? Is it real? Do we call it friendship? Is this truly a Community? Speaking for myself, I can't think of many "real" friendships that are as strong as some of the ones I have made online. Going back to the definition of friend, we can see that the relationships that we form online can fit every one of the various definitions. And a gathering of friends, a group of people dedicated to the same principles or united in admiration for others, is a Community: a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists. That works. As for me, I am happy to be a member of several communities and to have friends - real friends - with whom I communicate through the very air itself. Maybe we don't need a new word for it. Friend seems to fit just fine.
What communities do you belong to? Have you made lasting friendships through the Internet? Tell us your story below.