Being in a Global Communications MA program, the internet enters a lot of our discussions; it has been a significant part of all but one research paper that I have written here. You can’t avoid talking about this thing that has fundamentally transformed the way we communicate (especially in the international contexts that this program emphasizes).
Inevitably, someone eventually uses the phrase “in the real world” or “in real life.” The IRL nonsense has become one of my most consistent sources of irritation. Generally, I say nothing; the point being made and the larger conversation usually have nothing to do with this. Now I will inflict my pent up frustration on you, dear blog.
YES, “online” and “offline” have different parameters. I understand people that say things like, “Well, you can’t just bring your internet friends soup when they get sick.”
No, I can’t. That is hard. I can’t really bring my so-called “IRL” best friend soup when she gets sick either, because she lives thousands of miles away from me. In fact, we have not lived in the same time zone since we were freshmen in high school. But I digress.
I have met most of the people I would consider very close online friends; the people who I tell all my DEEPESTDARKESTSECRETS to or the people I turn to first when I need to talk about anything — however monumental or trivial. Still, many of them remain strictly or at least predominantly “online.”
These friendships, though containing a set of constraints that make them markedly different from my offline relationships, are no less real than those relationships, and I am going to lose my fucking mind if I have to keep listening to people talking about it that way.
THE INTERNET IS STILL REAL. I should stop to point out that there are plenty of theorists, people who have written wonderful academic papers on things related to the internet, who have said this. It’s not like this “The Internet Is Not Real” message is being handed down to me from the whole of academia or anything. Plenty of people who feel all sorts of things about the internet (good/bad/otherwise) have acknowledged that regardless of the qualitative impact of the internet on people’s lives and society at large, there is undoubtedly an IMPACT, and to say that the things experienced via the internet are in any way less “REAL” than those experienced or initiated offline is ridiculous.
There are a thousand counter-examples that I could offer from the “IRL” world, too. How is my friendship with Sara or Ginny in any way less “real” than my interactions with the woman at the grocery store? What is the barometer for “real” here? The fact that I see this woman and look her in the eye when I say, “Hello,” and “Thank you, goodbye,” somehow makes it more real than the friends who consoled me, and kept me calm, and helped me strategize, AND AND AND during last fall’s debacle with my little brother?
“But that’s not your ‘friend,’” you might say. Fine. For all the friends that I have made here in Paris — and I have made quite a few — what is it that makes these friends supposedly more real than, to keep with the example, Sara or Ginny? (I would add to that several other of my “internet” friends, but 1. I am excluding everyone that I have actually met offline -and- 2. It’s easier if I keep the list shorter.)
This isn’t to say that my friends here in Paris didn’t offer their support when everything happened with Derrik (also keeping to the example). But, that being said, I had known them for a couple months. How many of them actually knew me well enough to know my general way of dealing with things? My coping mechanisms?
Ginny and Sara did. Not only that, they made it a point to be helpful in a way that I could understand and appreciate. We have a common language and common cultural reference points. These are the people most likely to understand and accept a joke built around #pointlesshashtagswithtoomanywordslumpedtogether. These friendships have been built primarily around candor in a way that my offline friendships never have been. Even writing this post, there is a certain anxiety surrounding the way this post will manifest itself in the reactions of the “offline” people who might see it because of that reduced candor.
I am not saying that online friendships are inherently better than offline friendships. 45 minutes after I found out Derrik had been arrested, one of my grad school friends showed up at my door and offered to go get pizza. (I turned down that offer. Subsequently, The Internet Friends joked that this must mean I am truly distressed because what else could provoke me to turn down free pizza!)
It has nothing to do with placing a qualitative ranking from good to bad on offline or online friendships. My contention here is strictly with the use of that word, “real,” and everything it implies.
I call bullshit on the word. I call bullshit on the idea that even the most tenuous relationships that I have maintained online are somehow less real than all of my offline interactions. During the nightmare week with my brother dozens, perhaps hundreds — I never kept a count — of my Facebook friends reshared the story, asking their friends to call their representatives or even just keep my family in their thoughts and prayers. Likewise, the 20sb admin team put up a post about the situation and some 20sbers who I had hardly (if ever) interacted with also sent a few words of love and support my way. Internet “strangers.”
Every time a professor, classmate, or academic whose work I have to read draws the line between “internet” and “real” I just call bullshit on the whole damn thing.
I have “lived in the internet” for more years than I have lived in any other location, and the very fact that you consider a significant portion of my life to be somehow not “real,” well…
I was going to say that it makes you an asshole. In truth, I’m kind of saddened for you. I’m sad that you haven’t been able to know or understand how you can connect with and understand people whose lives and circumstances are so physically removed from your own, thanks to the internet. I’m sad that haven’t been able to experience the way a well-worded email, or a collection of so-called strangers can completely make your day. You are missing out. I guess that’s what I really want to say to you, professors, classmates, and academics who regard the internet as somehow non-real: you’re missing out.
And also maybe a tiny little gofuckyourselves, because sometimes the high road is overrated.
Besides, how else would I get to have the cherished memory of the time I drove to a corn field only to have my internet friend stuff me in her trunk..