Back in 2018, I met two of my best friends, Ava and Chanel, for the first time in a new restaurant across from my cousin’s apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles, primarily because it served Indian food, which I absolutely adore.
I didn’t actually meet them for the first time at dinner, though.
We met about a year and a half before in a 2016 Tumblr group chat. In California, we finally hugged and laughed in each other’s presence for the first time. There was no awkwardness, nothing different from our online personas and who we were in the real world. It felt like we had known each other all of our lives.
It’s difficult explaining the works of an online friendship to someone who hasn’t personally experienced it. For as long as I can remember, it was instilled in me that having friends on the internet was taboo and that they were most likely to be online predators. While it is important to take precautionary measures in case someone is indeed catfishing you, the internet is a wonderful place to meet people you might not otherwise get the chance to talk to. Actually, when I originally proposed the idea of meeting some friends up in Los Angeles to my father, I never brought up the fact that I had met those friends online. There seems to be a heavy stigma attached to online friendships.
People often pose these questions in regards to this topic: “Why would anyone need to make friends online? Why can’t you just make friends in real life?”
I understand these reasonings, but I’ve always had trouble forming new friendships in person. I was cursed with being socially awkward at all times and topped with a terrible resting face, which probably makes me appear aloof and uninterested. Online, however, I’m saved from trying to read people and act accordingly — there are no expectations when you’re behind a screen.
In various ways, I feel that the initial distance between Ava, Chanel and I allowed us to get close in the first place.
I used to find it so much easier to tell strangers on the internet about myself because I thought that they weren’t really considered “friends.” To me, they were just face-less outlets to pour all of my overwhelming emotions out to. In meeting these two friends of mine, however, I’ve come to realize that this skeptical view does not hold true. I’ve created genuine friendships with people online because I don’t have to worry about over-expressing myself.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have long in California. I was staying with my cousin and younger sister for two weeks, but Ava and Chanel were only in the area for three days, so we had to make the most of our time.
We planned our trip around intriguing tourist attractions, parks, museums and malls that we’d discussed in late-night group calls for months — the Santa Monica Pier, a few museums and hiking in Hollywood Hills, among the few of them.
We got henna tattoos together at the beach, took pictures at The Broad Infinity Mirrors Museum and slept underneath the stars at a camping site near the Hollywood sign. Perhaps, most shockingly, while dining on the most delicious fried delicacies at a tiny BBQ and restaurant in a random corner of Koreatown, we spotted “Girl’s Day” members Yura and Minah, and silently fangirled in unison — we are all hardcore K-pop fans.
My cousin and I left them at the LAX airport on Friday night so they could catch their flights home to their respective states. I dreaded this day because, realistically, we wouldn’t know when we would see each other again. Flying nowadays is so expensive, and as high school students transitioning into the college lifestyle, free time would be of little availability to any of us.
“It’s up to fate to unite us again,” was my final thought as I watched them disappear behind the customs and immigration checkpoint.
A year and a half of friendship is a long time if you think about it — even longer if your only mode of communication is through a screen. We were all undoubtedly nervous about meeting each other, often joking that we wouldn’t be as cool as our online personas in the real world.
Ava and Chanel had also been friends prior to befriending me, so a part of me felt like I would be the awkward intruder or third wheel to their already established relationship. On the contrary, while we sat at our table in that Indian restaurant trying to see who could eat the spiciest vegetable samosas without a sip of water, I realized that I couldn’t be the intruder in a friendship that I was already included in.
Looking at us from the outside in, our online relationship was built from stupidly terrible puns and our love for Korean pop. Those might be the things that we talk about the most, but at some time in our friendship, we’ve covered possibly every detail there is to know about each other, down to our purest, most vulnerable fragments. I’d say that makes for a solid foundation.
