A Different Type Of Friends, But Still Friends

Online friends are just that Friends. Living a life that involves a large amount of human interaction with friends online seems foreign to people who have little or no online activity. Chat rooms, Social Networks, blogging are all forms of communicating with others. In the process of doing any of these activities, friendships can be established on many levels. These friendships can be anything from the most casual comments (quite like the neighbor down the street that you wave to and say "Hi"), or become so involved that you and the friend essentially open up most of your life's activities to each other. Online friendships are as real as "in person" friendships. The only difference is the ways they are developed.

Being active in the chat community, we see people trying to be something they're not. They usually don't stay around long. Real chatters seem to have a type of 6th sense that sees through these artificial people. This problem seems to get compounded by the press that loves to report on online people attempting to be something their not (for whatever reason). Fortunately we have been able to actually establish real friendships with real people. In times of a life crises these friends are as supportive as any lifelong friend you could have.
I was fortunate to meet my wife online. We became good friends without ever meeting. Once we met the relationship grew to a love and ultimately a commitment to marry and spend our lives together. Meeting online forced us to communicate. Unlike "in person" relationships, body language can't be detected, so communications was essential.
Illness or death of an online friend is hard. That person was in your community of friends and in an instant can be gone.The pain of the loss is also real.
Chris Pirillo, who has an extremely large presence on the internet expressed the loss of a couple friends in an extremely classy way. Please take a few minutes and watch this video.

Yes online friends are real!