

On Meeting People from the Internet - zacharycohn
http://www.zaccohn.com/2011/04/meeting-people/

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udp
"Real life" friends - met by chance

Internet friends - met by interest

I think that says it all - I've met many internet people over the years, and
they've all been the most incredible, 'three-dimensional' people. The internet
really opens up the opportunity to meet people you can relate to on every
level - people you'd never have gotten in touch with otherwise.

~~~
syed123
About five years ago online dating was looked down upon but since then i have
been seeing lot of people getting married to people they found online. Same
way finding interesting friends is best done 1-1, as its rhe depth not the
breadth of the relationship that matters. Its the same reason i use [and
started] <http://letslunch.com> and have met over a dozen great people over
lunch, Because frankly i don't have time to goto meetups which happens on a
specific day and on specific time, wheres in conferences/networking events
people are always ought to meet as many people as possible and even while
chatting without you, they are peeking over your shoulder to see who they are
going to talk next.

~~~
kaerast
Have you thought about opening letslunch in other cities? Whether it be doing
it yourself, having others do it or open sourcing the code. It should work
equally well in certain other cities or regions.

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vollmond
I met my wife this way. Both had accounts on a LiveJournal-like site, both
gravitated to the same circle of friends, mutual interest became more and now
she's been my best friend for 7 years. We've met others (on our honeymoon
driving through Houston, on our move to Baltimore when we passed through Ohio,
going to a wedding of two other friends who we met this way and who met each
other that way).

They are the deepest friendships. You don't become friends over the Internet
without good communication - everything else is secondary.

~~~
semanticist
My experiences absolutely confirm this. I met my wife on LiveJournal, and we
were only together in person for a week before we got married (and later she
moved to the UK).

When the bulk of your relationship is done over the internet, it absolutely
forces you to learn how to communicate, from the start and continuously
throughout the relationship.

I'm quite certain that if 'normal' people had to do this there'd be a lot less
marriage breakdowns - and possibly a lot less marriages that were never really
going to last.

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jarin
I've never been overly weirded out by meeting people from the Internet (going
to Gooncon came close), but I will say it was definitely strange the first
time some completely random stranger came up to me in a bar and said "You're
Jarin, right? I follow you on Twitter!" Strange in a good way though, I bought
the guy a beer :)

~~~
shii
I'd never go to somewhere like Gooncon, too high a possibility of meeting
people who take everything on SA seriously in real life.

Do you ever get a sense of The Truman Show going to cons and meetups with
people from the internet? I'd imagine it's really strange to find all these
random people who know your name and a shit-ton of information about you at
these events.

~~~
zacharycohn
It's not weird (or at least it never was for me), because you know all those
people too! The point of the article was that people "on the internet" are
real people too.

~~~
pyre
I think shii's point was more about 'lurkers' showing up and trying to talk to
you like they know you, even though they've never even communicated with you
online _or_ offline.

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guynamedloren
I love this article and the stories it contains. I have the same distaste
about the word "networking" and what it seems to imply these days, which I
think has limited me a bit with making friends in certain circles (ex:
entrepreneurship). I don't seem to have a problem with becoming friends from
other online communities, though. Half of my "real life" friends are from
offroading/truck communities where I've been mildly participating for only the
past year.

I think I'm hesitant about "networking" within the entrepreneurial community
because of the "Maybe we can help eachother out" sorta thing mentioned by the
author. It seems like networking in this way is merely for personal gain. As a
result, I have exactly zero entrepreneurial-minded friends.

That being said, anybody want to be friends? Seriously.

~~~
zacharycohn
Like I said in the article, I do! Email me and say hi. zaccohn@gmail.com

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kellishaver
I met my husband on the internet, back in 1996, when it was considered unusual
and weird to do so. We're about to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.

I met one of my very best friends and business partners online in '97. We talk
nearly every single day and have worked closely together for years. We co-own
a company together. - We've never actually met in person. We'll be doing that
for the first time in 14 years next weekend.

I have other very close friends that have started as online friendships, as
well.

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lotharbot
I haven't found a big difference in the quality of friends met online vs in
person.

What has been different is how well those friendships persist. Finishing
school, changing jobs, moving to a new city or neighborhood, or simply
changing schedules can put you out of touch with "real life" friends. But I
can still log on to the same websites, and my online friends are still there.
Such a change might even put me closer to them.

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Vivtek
I've always enjoyed meeting my Net friends - starting in the 90's, when I
still did business trips; I'd try to find somebody to take out to lunch on my
company's dime. Ha.

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psyklic
I've met lots of people from online. Some networking events have their invite
lists on Facebook. If so, I look up the people attending and message the ones
I have the most in common with. It turns out that these people become the best
friends I make at the meetups!

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astrofinch
Most of my best friends I met through the internet, or through friends I met
through the internet. Specifically, the internet introduced me to one largely
internet-assembled social circle that did the rest.

