{"id":4686,"date":"2016-06-02T02:37:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T21:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4686"},"modified":"2016-06-02T02:37:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T21:07:28","slug":"friends-with-benefits-2-0-online-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4686","title":{"rendered":"Friends With Benefits 2.0: Some of My Favourite People are Ones I Have Never Met"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span><\/p>y Instagram and Facebook is filled with people I\u2019ve met at gigs, on flights, or house parties. They are important to me, even though I have never met any of them after our first meeting. I hold their opinions in high regard. All of this, mainly because the foundation of these friendships, is mutual interests. And I know more about them than most people I rub shoulders with every day. <\/span>\n\nI can tell you with confidence that M \u2013 with whom I interacted for 10 minutes at an <\/span>Aisi Taisi Democracy <\/span><\/i>gig in 2017 \u2013 was upset after Atishi\u2019s recent smear note. Now she only hopes that the AAP candidate gets her due on May 23. \u00a0I can also strike up a riveting conversation with S about Chennai\u2019s loss to Mumbai by one run in the IPL final, despite not seeing him in a decade. <\/span>\n\nI am only acquainted with M and S\u2019s passionate beliefs and opinions through their social media posts. I might have never hung out with them but given the times we live in, that is not even a dealbreaker. As of now, I\u2019ve managed to create a pretty good character biography of my online friends in my head. So much that now if I see an article on AAP on my feed, I know it would be shared by M. And if I read a tweet on Dhoni, I\u2019d be able to tell you how exactly S would react. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nConversations with these guys are great, yet I shy away from meeting them in person. Maybe that\u2019s because my social skills are as good as Sansa Stark\u2019s ability of keeping a secret. So obviously when the members of a Whatsapp Group I\u2019m part of made a plan to meet recently, I wasn\u2019t exactly chuffed to attend it. \u201cEw, going out and actually meeting people like some kind of neanderthal?\u201d my mind whined. But on the phone call, the host said something very unnerving, \u201cYou aren\u2019t obliged to talk to anyone or even show up. Most of us are doing this as a means to get over our social anxiety anyway.\u201d A meeting of a WhatsApp Group of strangers called \u201cSocial Anxiety Warriors\u201d didn\u2019t seem that bad after all. <\/span>\n

Like most people my age, I discovered the first of my many online friendships on MSN Messenger. When I jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 with a bunch of my 9th grade classmates, an online friend meant someone who didn\u2019t share your pin-code, but knew you inside and out \u2013 a freelancer friend of sorts.<\/blockquote>\nI\u2019ve noticed that most people who are active on social media tend to be introverts in person. In fact, there\u2019s enough evidence to suggest that many introverts may use social media to overcompensate for their communication barriers, in real life. Take my online buddies for instance. I\u2019d known these people for years and had watched some of them grow up online. We\u2019ve discussed heartbreaks and bad bosses, politics and climate change, but this was the first time most of us were actually meeting in person. So obviously, at our Social Anxiety Warriors meet, almost all of us were a far cry from our online personas. On the interwebz, we shared hot takes openly, made edgy jokes and were generally perceived as outgoing. Yet, here they were, the most social among us barely managing to humour each other. Give us our phones, and the conversations would be smooth. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nLike most people my age, I discovered the first of my many online friendships on MSN Messenger. When I jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 with a bunch of my 9th grade classmates, an online friend meant someone who didn\u2019t share your pin-code, but knew you inside and out \u2013 a freelancer friend of sorts. Meeting each other wasn\u2019t a guarantee, but it was always on the horizon.<\/span>\n\nNow more than 10 years later, I\u2019m still online, but the grammar of internet friends has slightly tweaked. Emotional investment and familiarity with someone\u2019s life isn\u2019t a prerequisite for friendship any longer. The word for the year is instead, \u201cmutuals\u201d \u2013 people who share mutual friends and common interests. People who, as this <\/span>essay<\/span><\/a> on <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Verge<\/span><\/i> points out, \u201c<\/span>by dint of mutual follows, appear in your life and manage to stay there, sometimes for years.\u201d It checks out. <\/span>\n\nI have known S for 13 years now; she is one of my oldest friends. <\/span>I don\u2019t need to be around her physically to share the big moments. The day she got a new pet \u2013 a hamster \u2013 we were exchanging pictures all day, discussing how adorable his nose was. Now, she shares a video with me almost every other day and I pretty much look at his picture and know he is under the weather. Same with A, an Orkut acquaintance from 2005 whom I\u2019ve never met but who is a constant in all my social media accounts. Just last month, he landed a new job at Accenture and I felt the weird misplaced pride I would have felt for a cousin. <\/span>\n\nPerhaps that\u2019s the thing about internet friends right now <\/span>\u2013 we\u2019ve come to be a generation that prioritises convenience in almost any relationship. Our threshold for getting out of our houses to have actual human interactions is abysmally low and we\u2019d rather stay indoors with our devices. After all, it\u2019s easier to stay in touch with someone through replies to their Instagram stories than having to meet over coffee. Personally, I just don\u2019t have the bandwidth to maintain a robust social life. At least not one that requires looking up from my phone screen.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emotional investment and familiarity with someone\u2019s life isn\u2019t a prerequisite for friendship any longer. The word of the year is instead, \u201cmutuals\u201d \u2013 people who share mutual friends and common interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":4687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[354,1712,1127,1912,8303,8304,357],"class_list":["post-4686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-facebook","tag-friends","tag-instagram","tag-millennial","tag-mutuals","tag-online-friends","tag-social-media"],"yoast_head":"\nFriends With Benefits 2.0: Some of My Favourite People are Ones I Have Never Met<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Emotional investment and familiarity with someone\u2019s life isn\u2019t a prerequisite for friendship any longer. 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