The internet is the junk food of social interaction, sure it has calories and will likely keep you alive if you have nothing else but it will lead to chronic illness if it is all you ever use.

Some of my closest friends are people I began interacting with online - some I've made trips to visit, others are so far away that we might never meet afk. I began chafing at the online/irl dichotomy more than thirty years ago when my uncle showed me Ohio State's intranet and my parents lamented that I needed to be spending my time in "the real world". Back then, I was floored that I could have real interactions with real people in real places I'd never been, and these days I am no less amazed by the ability to connect on a real level with people in digital spaces.

To this day, online and afk are the distinctions I use for my real life interactions - my words are just as able to bring comfort and solace or mockery and derision in either space, and I comport myself the same way in both because of thoughts like the ones in this post.

Agreed. The people on the internet are real, living their lives out somewhere else in the world. They are just as important as anyone else. I've had times in my life where I've socialized extensively offline and times where I've socialized extensively online. I don't see a fundamental difference to the relationships I make. The people I've become close with who I exclusively talk to online and haven't shared physical proximity with are some of the most important people in my life.

I do think it can sometimes be harder to build an initial rapport online. The lack of body language can make it tricky to convey meaning sometimes in the same way you would offline, and you don't get these other cues that tell you about what a person is thinking. That said, though, sometimes face-to-face interactions introduce a lot of noise that isn't necessarily helpful either. The body language of anxiety, to me, isn't typically super usefully communicative, and it can often become a component to offline interactions.

Also, like, some video games do have pretty compelling body language. DayZ, in particular, is incredibly good at being emotive. It does a great job of translating tiny movements that convey a lot of personality. Everything from moving your head around to different ways of gesticulating while talking and even the way people walk can have a huge impact on communication. A lot of the time I can spot my friends, even in totally different outfits, just based on the way they move around in-game. It kind of reminds me of the 'body language' of vehicles on the road, but with much greater articulation.

Personally, for me, I find a lot of comfort in online spaces and in the relationships I've developed with people I've become close to through those spaces. As someone who isn't always super comfortable with eyeballs on me, and as someone who mostly grew up in a place where people were pretty fucking hostile, I think it's enriched my life substantially.

Also, like, I get to have relationships with people all over the world. I feel like it gives some perspective that it's tough to have otherwise without extensive travel.