Internet Friends
Katie Sometimes I get the urge to write. Most of the time I have no idea what I want to write, though. The other day I tweeted asking what people thought I should blog about here – my only limitations was I preferred it to be music related so it could fit under the “concert” title of this blog, but if the topic was interesting enough I’d be down for anything.
One of the topics I got was “meeting cool people” I asked for clarification – cool celebrities or cool friends? I was told my cool friends.
I decided to write a bit about friends I have met on the internet. When I was in 7th or 8th grade we got the internet at my house. I used to go around looking for other Hanson fans. I found alt.fan.hanson on usenet and my first real internet relationships began. A group of us became really close and we would chat online staying up to all hours of the night talking about Hanson, our lives, crushes, boyfriends, etc.
In 2000, I started meeting up with these girls at concerts. (I always had my mom with me, just in case they weren’t girls – but they all were!) I’m not about to sit here and figure it all out – but if I had to guess I would say that more than half of my 41 Hanson concerts have been attended with internet friends – if not even more than that.
For me, it was easier to find people who had similar interests to me on message boards than at school, where I was one of very few Hanson fans. They were also more accepting of me than the kids at school were, probably because we were all kind of in the same boat.
I have continued to make friends and meet up with people I have met online. I still keep in touch with a lot of the girls I started talking to in 2000, we have grown up together and gone through ups and downs together just as we would have if we lived next door – even though we live miles and miles away (the evolution of social networking sites have helped with this a lot too!)
This month I am going to 8 or 9 more concerts – and ALL of them will be with internet friends and none with so called “real life” friends. (But my internet friends are also my real life friends, as far as I am concerned! I see them way more often than my friends from school) I very much look forward to hanging out with Lauren P, Christine, Ashley (who gave me the topic for this post), Marisa, Maribeth, Lauren D, Leah and anyone else I might be forgetting!