formspring.me

no need to be a grammer nazi why not just answer if theyre a real friend or a internet friend aka faker

As I said, I give as good as I get. If you expect me to spend a single second of my precious time on whoever you are, you'd better be worth it. Slack off and be lazy, and I'm not going to be arsed with you, other than to poke fun at poor grammar or txtspeak because it amuses me to do so.

I disagree with your dichotomy; someone can be a good friend without ever having met face to face, internet or no internet.

This goes back to the days of having "pen pals", when people were intelligent and coherent enough to actually put pen to paper and write to one another on a regular basis.

There are collections of these correspondences between people who sometimes never did meet face to face, or only did so after years and years of writing to one another, and they are fascinating. The depths to which these people came to know one another simply through their letters is astounding, and touching on many levels.

The same is possible through the internet today, obviously in a much more immediate fashion, and because it can move so much faster, a modicum of caution and common sense is required; just because you can IM with someone you've only just met, or webcam or Skype or whatever, doesn't mean you can trust a single thing they tell you. The speed with which you can allow someone into your life this way is something to be incredibly careful of, and unfortunately most people end up learning this the hard way.

It takes time to build that kind of trust with someone, and this is when the fakers generally slip up; they want to move too fast, the little details don't match up, the common patterns of drama start to emerge. You just have to use some sense.

So I suggest you expand your definitions a little bit; you may have had bad experiences with people online, as I certainly have, but a friend you mostly know via the internet does not automatically mean fake.

This particular individual is someone I've known for something like six years now, met through a shared music fandom, and despite the fact that we live in different countries and haven't had the opportunity to hang out in realtime, she is no less a friend to me than the people I see day to day. Hell, she's more involved and interested in my daughter's life than most of the people I'm related to.

A box of books arrived today, from this friend, for my daughter. I'm immensely grateful that I'm not having to explain to my kid that they're a posthumous gift.

Have at it.