well im not sure if this shall be here or disscussion, so move if needed..

my question to u guys is, do u think people u met over the internet and u talk much to are "real" friends? or arent they because u never met them really, or never speaked with them?
can u even call them "friends"?

would u call a person, whith who u talked over years couple times a day, but never met in real life more a friend then a guy who u just met 2-3 days in real life and u talked to ?
well, i would say people u met over the internet and u talk very much to u can call them friends. cause "chatting" is like talking. u just dont see the guy who sits next to you. but u can never know who really sits there. u have to trust him what he says.. so.. whats your opinion about that?
im just interested, because most the people i know in "real" life say, that these people are not real friends.

People you talk to online are your acquaintances, anyone who says otherwise obviously has no real friends.

I'm not saying online acquaintances can't be as good as friends though.

Well what I think is that people that you meet online and been talking too for years is more a friend than someone you've met for 2-3 days, that's more of an acquaintance, but there is a certain sense of anonymity and coldness that you get from people online then people you can actually see, like their mannerisms, how they look, the way they talk. You can get so many false thoughts of a person from just text, you can never really know someone ti'll you have heard them or seen them, it's just not possible.

But on the other hand the text is more a window to a person than people think. You can still have a sense of who they are and what their mind set is on things if you have chatted long enough with this person. You can still call them your friend even though you have never actually seen them, sure you have to trust what they say but you will still develop a bond if you have interacted for that long, and any charade that they might have tried to keep up would eventually crumble after that amount of time.

Also by that amount you must be able to trust them for they have stayed by you side and if you trust what they say then they must trust with what you say if they keep coming back and you keep talking to them, its obvious if you have stayed that long then you see something good with that person's personality and in many ways the internet gives you a better experience because you can meet and interact with people that not only have the same interest as you to be on there but as well the only thing you can know from them is their personality since you have no idea what they look or sound like, you might have never seen them in real life because of the way they might look like or walk or talk since your mind automatically assumes certain things about a person.

And this was supposed to be a short answer :P

Zayex you are a dumb dumb.

I have friends that I've never met but I talk to for 8 hours a day for years. Not that there are time constraints on making friends, some people who are my friends I might have talk to only for a few hours.

Since when do you have to meet people IRL too make them your friends? There's absolutely no difference. Actually people I know IRL talk a lot more shit than people I've met online. It really makes no difference how old or what someone looks like. You think you can't make friends with fat people or people who are older than you? You must be the kid in school who only talks to people in his grade.

Internet friends aren't real friends, hell naw. You dont even know them or saw them, also your post just said are "internet friends real friends?". So what I am saying here is you just put them in 2 different categories 1. internet friends and 2. real friends. So no they are not real friends, internet friends are internet friends, and real friends are real friends.

I personally don't consider any of my internet friends as a "real" friend. I consider them more of a person to cure my boredom with haha. There's also the factor of the person you are hanging out with may not be who they tell you they are. That's why its also good to sort of distant your online friends and to not let them be a huge deal in your life. Better safe then sorry :3

I can consider people I know very well on the internet friends. It doesn't really matter if you know what they look like, because looks don't matter. If you can talk to them for hours and hours on end, and your conversations are mutually pleasing, you get along very well, etc, they are your friend. It doesn't matter. Most of my online friends have me on skype, and I have talked to them enough (text and voice) to call them my real friends. They are no different to "real life friends" except for the fact that they can be all over the world. I honestly are more open to people on the internet, since I don't have to risk being embarrassed or feel ashamed, whereas in real life you don't want to tell people things for the risk of them not wanting to be your friend or whatever.

The whole "internet friend = real friend?" thing is very subjective, and some people feel different about internet acquaintances than others.

Oh, and I do have real friends, lots of them, but I think "real life" friends aren't enough. I resort to the internet simply because I'm not like other people in my age group, and it's easier to find people that are like you on the internet.

I'm better friends with some of the people I know from Toribash and League of Legends than people I actually know in person.

it really depends on the friendship you have with them... I like to say a group of people I've been talking to on the internet over the course of 2-3 years are real friends, regardless of the fact we've never met.

i would trust my life to more people that i've met on TB and LoL then i would to my own friends.

so yeah, i consider people i've met, talked to etc on the internet friends. hell, Andy (uric) and myself talk to each other as much as we can.