The interesting part of the whole discussion is whether your response is reasonable.
100 years ago - the blink of an eye on the timeline of humanity - it would have been ludicrous. Now it's become commonplace for the friends you make in your youth to experience a global diaspora out of convenience and personal preference, and to try to maintain a relationship using technology and occasional travel. It also seems reasonable for people to make friends with reasonable success to the small fraction of people geographically scattered over the globe who happen to share your taste in music and all your other hyperspecific personal preferences, connecting again through technology and travel.
The big question is whether this is reasonable. I thought in 2006 that I'd maintain friendships with the friends I made (due to physical proximity!) in my high school classes and athletic teams using Facebook. Instead, Facebook decided to use my attention on their platform due to those friends to sell ads, and the relationship maintenance got harder, and eventually went by the wayside. The handful I still maintain contact with happen to have physical proximity more than commonality of values/priorities/culture.
The friends I have on forums, Discord, Reddit, and in Rocket League/Minecraft due to shared interests are real people, probably perfectly nice, just physically located on the other side of the Internet connection and a screen (or microphone), but if I've never shared a handshake, hug, meal, or home with them are they the same kind of friends as my neighbors, members of local rec leagues and hackerspaces, workplace friends, and other people who live near me?
The big experiment of social media is whether nonconformity to local community, and instead forming virtual communities online, performs the same function to bring a happy, healthy life to the humans who practice it. You may say that it's too early to tell, that present failings are just growing pains, but I think the early evidence is quite strongly pointing towards "no".
I don't use social media, so I don't think this applies. I also think the corporate-mediated friendship model is toxic and disgusting. I'm not on IG or FB and my IRL friends from "back home" I connected with first on interest-based email mailing lists before we ever met in person.
100 years ago - the blink of an eye on the timeline of humanity - it would have been ludicrous. Now it's become commonplace for the friends you make in your youth to experience a global diaspora out of convenience and personal preference, and to try to maintain a relationship using technology and occasional travel. It also seems reasonable for people to make friends with reasonable success to the small fraction of people geographically scattered over the globe who happen to share your taste in music and all your other hyperspecific personal preferences, connecting again through technology and travel.
The big question is whether this is reasonable. I thought in 2006 that I'd maintain friendships with the friends I made (due to physical proximity!) in my high school classes and athletic teams using Facebook. Instead, Facebook decided to use my attention on their platform due to those friends to sell ads, and the relationship maintenance got harder, and eventually went by the wayside. The handful I still maintain contact with happen to have physical proximity more than commonality of values/priorities/culture.
The friends I have on forums, Discord, Reddit, and in Rocket League/Minecraft due to shared interests are real people, probably perfectly nice, just physically located on the other side of the Internet connection and a screen (or microphone), but if I've never shared a handshake, hug, meal, or home with them are they the same kind of friends as my neighbors, members of local rec leagues and hackerspaces, workplace friends, and other people who live near me?
The big experiment of social media is whether nonconformity to local community, and instead forming virtual communities online, performs the same function to bring a happy, healthy life to the humans who practice it. You may say that it's too early to tell, that present failings are just growing pains, but I think the early evidence is quite strongly pointing towards "no".