Very nice. You have a wonderful way with words.

Thank you, Nowena but I still have a problem with Internet friendship. Friendship needs contact to grow and flourish. I am friendly with many people on several forums but that does not make us friends. I do feel I am friends in my chat room even if I do not see them for weeks or even months on end. In the chat room we do just that. Mostly casual, even sill stuff. Sometimes serious stuff. Talk about games, yes. Sometimes we have companionable silence as go about doing other things until we hear the PING. All the little things that make of friendship.

Yahoo, MSN Messenger, xfire are similar. Skype is different there is something about actually talking to someone that makes you feel that you have to talk. I wish our chat room at live voice, someone told me that it could have but I have no idea how to make it so or if it would need special software or configuring.

You do not see a friend frequently or have frequent contact in order to be friends but in order for it to grow and become deeper it needs nourishment. Friendship can also die for various reasons.

True.

I believe it depends on the site where you develop your forum whether or not you can have live voice enabled. They have to have the software installed first. Or, something like that. But, if someone you're chatting with on the forum has Skype, you can still invite them to a live voice talk.

Nakia, your subject is one that I am most interested in. For this has been mentioned in TEG. I am a LOTRO player. Have been for 3 years. And over those years I have seen and experienced very special friendships, even in the forums I can consider people friends. Of course these friendships have their down sides and to a 3rd person party, it can look pretty weird but that is because those people have not experienced things like this before.

The idea of Internet friendships is rather new to me. I have a few people I have known for 6 or 7 years and consider friends. I got SKYPE primarily because of one of them. Because of the mobility of the gaming community I have lost track of several people I would have liked to keep in touch with. I swore I would never join Facebook but did so I could keep in touch with people no matter what happened. Games come and go, forums come and go but it is a shame when people come and go.

I agree again. It's amazing to me how upset I got and for how long after a favorite forum went down.

Again an event has happened which brings home to me this word 'friendship'. I am now thinking in terms of how I use this word.

Close friends - those who are close to me whose loss would leave big hole in my life. These are people near and dear to me whether online or offline. These are the ones I share the more intimate, personal experiences, thoughts. Sometimes the companionship is a silient one, no words need to be expressed. Online we share a chat room or yahoo each other or use SKYPE. We really talk to each other sharing hopes and fears and grow to know each other.

Good friends - not so personal. I may actually know little about their personal lives but they have joined me in comradship, in helping me or being helped by me. We have chatted, exchanged view points, laughed and cried together. Online we may share a chat room, yahoo or SKYPE but it is more casual, less frequent and little or no personal information is exchanged. There loss leaves a hole but it heals over and is not so tramatic as the first group.


Friends or General Friends - people I enjoy talking to, doing things with and may exchange serious opinions but it is more companionship than personal. We may help each other from time to time. Online we may share a chat room, It is casual most of the time. They will be missed for a while but will be replaced by others.

Comrads - Fellow forum members, worrk mates. Sometimes we go through difficult times together and the rlationship can have a closeness to it but there is little or no exchange of personal information. From this last group friends frequently come and the relationship can grow and blossom and sometimes it doesn't.

Just some rambling thoughts that are currently passing through my mind.

I understand how it is necessary, sometimes, to categorize things in your life, especially when you're going through times of great stress or disappointment, Nakia. But, please do be careful while placing your friends into their compartments.

The easiest problem to notice is that sometimes we develop strong opinions that turn out to be based on a misunderstanding. There is a danger, particularly when we spend far too much time with only ourselves for physical company, that we lose track of just who has been told what. Or, that the receiver of our information understands what they were told in the manner we wanted it understood. Historically, and by nature, we get this important feedback from that person's body language as much or more than from what they say. If they look quizzical, we know, automatically, that they didn't understand or didn't receive the missive we thought we gave them. If they look concerned, we know there is something more that we are not looking at and perhaps we should question why.

The internet is even worse for this, because we don't know for sure if they have read the message we sent them yet. They might have been sick, they might be involved with something very important in their personal, real life, or they might have just read their email list in a different order which left a different impression or maybe they are answering them out of order.

I lost a friend I love very much because she assumed . . . something, she never would tell me quite what, but I think it was awful that I had done or thought. We were very close. In many cases, I knew what she was thinking or feeling when she was miles away and I hadn't heard from her in months. I think that scared her sometimes, and other times it gave her an unrealistic belief that I should always know exactly what she was going through at any time and if I didn't respond - without her prompt that something was wrong - it was because I didn't care about her. Nothing I could say would change her mind.

I Think I understand your post very well, Nowena.

Offline, face to face, people I can deal with pretty well. Some better than others, of course.

On line I do have problems. Conversations and debates in the SP Alleys have helped a lot because it is not unusual for a poster to pick out one point and fix on it, often misunderstanding it because either it is poorly worded or they just haven't paid attention to the whole post. I have learned to respond to this often asking them to reread my post and giving an exclamation of what I meant. Usually works, not always.

I try not to do that with peoples posts. If I don't understand I do try to ask for an exclamation. I have had so hot debates in the alleys and ended up on friendly terms with my opponent. We may not agree but we agree to respect the other person's point of view. :XD That always makes me feel good.

Yes, I compartmentalize things. "Male brain syndrome". You have the "female brain" which sees the broader picture. Because I know I need the broader picture as well as the more restrictive but valuable one I like to post things that I am analyzing or bothered by. I need both my male friends and my women friends to help me keep my mind in order.

I do find it a bit hard to have the emotions and soul of women and a brain categorized as male. I send out mixed signs to people. I don't like being stereotyped myself and try not to do it to others but probably fail without realizing that I have.

I do hope everything works out well for you and that you consider me some kind of friend always. But, it may not be a good thing to place me in a compartment. People have been trying that for years, but I don't fit into any of them. You don't know how many times they have come to me saying, "For a long time I thought you were . . . but you're not that at all." I just smile and know that I don't fit their new one either.

And, that was people who knew or thought they knew me in real life.

But, I can still be a friend.