How Online Friends are Like High School (but Better)

You ditch math class (and speech class, and that other class that starts first thing in the morning) to drink beer with friends before your dad gets home.

Er, maybe you didn’t… but well, anyway.

Your friends are people you can’t imagine not talking to 1,001 times daily even though you didn’t know their names a few years ago when you were in biology together.

How Online Friends are Like High School (but Better)

Online friends and blogging, like much of life, is an eternity and also a blink in time.

You can’t remember not being a blogger.

Not knowing the people you’ve met online would be a travesty.

You get weepy when you think of quitting the blog world, because you can’t imagine not talking to your friends even though you didn’t know their names a few years ago when you were just a regular person who didn’t share intimate life details on the internet.

This is how How Online Friends are Like High School (but Better).

 

You remember being a freshman, and how high school was exciting, scary, and somehow still smelled like first grade, except sweatier with more hairspray. Your friendships were forming, and you believed that the cool and older kids would surely notice your uniqueness and invite you to hang out in the West Lobby after lunch.

You were nice to everybody – even the weirdos – because the school is huge, and most of your junior high friends don’t share your schedule.

As a freshman blogger, your online relationships are tentative. You comment on the cool kids’ blogs, waiting for a reply you never get, but you’re hopeful.

Your blog is unique and cool, after all. Just like high school freshman you, who had the required pink Reebok shoes.

As a high school sophomore, you know where the good lockers are, where to eat lunch, and realized that some of your classmates are actually “Doing It.” As in, going all the way.

Weird, gross, and you pray for a boyfriend before graduation and wonder when you’ll be “Doing It,” too.

That’s the year you start to realize you aren’t as unique as you used to think you were, and realize that just because you have pink Reeboks, well… they don’t make you cool.

When it comes to online friends, the sophomore year in blog land is when you realize some of your colleagues are getting paid to post, and they’re doing more than you are.

Which is weird, gross, and you pray for people to offer you money for your words, too. It’s also when you realize you weren’t as cool as you thought you were, and add some sidebar widget things to your blog. Join some writing groups.

Junior year is both easier and more serious. They tell you to start looking at colleges, even though you just got your driver’s license, and make questionable decisions hourly. That’s the year that you know pretty much everything, and tell your parents that you can’t wait to be on your own.

They laugh at you, knowing how badly you’re going to suck at laundry and not eating candy at midnight.

Online relationships in the junior year of blogging are now tattooed on your heart and in your head, and you roll your eyes at people who think that friends in your computer aren’t real. You know that your online relationships are often more real, because let’s face it. Nobody shares the kind of shit we share online with moms at the playground. That’s the year you quit bothering with the cool kids, because you’ve found your people, and the cool kids have sold their souls for free crap. You’ve also sold your words for free crap by now, because, hello? Who doesn’t like free crap?

By the time you’re a senior, you’re terrified and exhilarated. You’re almost free, and almost grown up enough to realize that you’ll soon be leaving everything you’ve ever taken for granted.

You’ve chosen a college, or to not go, or whatever, and the weight of SATs and ACTs are off your back, giving you freedom to drink beer at the reservoir with friends you can’t imagine not talking to 1,001 times each day, even though you didn’t know their names back in biology class.

I like to think I’m not yet in my senior year of blogging and online relationships, because I plan on holding on tightly to the people I’ve met through writing. Also, I haven’t finished my book in spite of Nanowrimo, and therefore, still show up to class every now and again.

This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post. This week’s (complicated and awesome, in a Clark-way) sentence is “A study released by the Department of HHS reports that most people consider their online relationships comparable to their social experiences in high school… this is true because….”

Clark is our sentence thinker-upper and co-host for the week. Feel free to write about how blogging is like high school, about online relationships in general, about high school relationships, etc. Clark has been doing Finish the Sentence for about as long as I have and this is his first time hosting! Also, I love him, even though he didn’t eat breakfast with me that one time in Jersey. Like he’s a too-cool senior or whatever.