Have you ever had a friend that you could talk to about
anything ? I mean the sort of person you would email
several times a week, just with random thoughts that were in
your head, or things that were bothering you, or things that you
just wanted to say but had no one else to say them to?
My wife and I met in real life first, but we used to exchange emails daily over a couple of years. I’ve never met anyone else I could do that with.
How do you go about finding the right person to communicate with? There are all sorts of online pages and “services” for finding
penpals, but they all hook people together based on the most superficial similarities, and the chance of finding a kindred spirit seems depressingly low.
Have any of you experienced finding kindred spirits (in the non-romantic sense) online? How did you go about it? How many pointless exchanges with strangers did it take before you found the right people?
Once, back in high school, I met a girl over ICQ. Turns out she lived about 15 minutes away from me, we talked on the phone every week or so over the course of a few months. We lost touch before I had access to a car, so I never did meet her in person.
Over this past summer I was exchanging daily emails with a female I met in real life years ago, and now we are pretty good buddies. We didn’t really talk much before and I don’t think we would be friends if not for the email exchange.
i honestly dont know. ive had 2 friends who fit that bill. one i met on a yahoo chat board out of about 20 people. We just talked and continued to talk until we became closer friends
the other i met IRL at college.
I was like that with my brother for a while too but that was when we communicated over the internet. now that we communicate in person its different now.
I honestly have no good advice for you. its hard making a transition from stranger to trustworthy person and i dont know how to make the transition myself. i guess you just keep talking as long as you aren’t pissing each other off and sooner or later it happens. maybe ive just been lucky or something.
I am one of the few fortunate people to have found a very genuine friend on the net.But getting a good friend is pretty much like finding gold.You have to go through a lot of rubble even before you can see it.
The good friend in question happens to be calm kiwi.We met each other on Yahoo Chat and our friendship still goes on strong 5 years hence.What me and she share is pretty much what you described.We are like kindered spirit who share a lot of things in comman.Over this period of time we are so close to each other that we can literally read each others minds.Mind you what we have is a great platonic relationship.
You can still find genuinely nice people on various chat rooms although it is more difficult now that it was 5 years ago thanks to all the automated bots flooding rooms.
When hunting for a friend online be prepared to be really patient and accept the fact that not all friendships start with a bang stay like that.I had tonnes of people added as my buddies on my messenger but no more than half a dozen are true friends after a decent span of time.
But in the end all the efforts seem worth it,especially if you get a genuine friend like I have.
Three or four Dopers. I chat to Ice Wolf on ICQ, and others like Goo, Flammi, Zenster, and Quasimodem aren’t so big on chat (which is good, or I’d never sleep), but I know they are there if I need 'em. Well, actually I do chat to Flammi now and then. There are plenty of other Dopers I haven’t mentioned - mostly Aussies and Kiwis.
Strangely, the Pit is a good place to make friends. When Dopers form alliances in a Pit thread, often a “thank you” email will follow, and that is a good start.
Before I discovered the SDMB, I made several good friends on ICQ ( I flew to Hong Kong to meet one - a romance that was killed by distance, but we are still friends). I have another dear, dear friend I met on Yahoo (heya Saf!), but she went off to Cambridge to embiggen her brain, and we don’t have much time to chat these days.