The Inner Circle

What is friendship?

In my online career I have come accross a lot of people who claimed to be my friend, or who wanted to be my friend. Why did these people want to be my friend? I don’t really know, probably just to name drop, or to think their gonna get somewhere.

To alter something that was said by Wolf in Star Trek : First Contact, “Friendship is earnt, not given away”. I believe this implicitly, if I meet someone in real life, it takes a while before I’d consider them a friend. In the mean time they are mearly an aquaintance.

Sure some people you work with, or spend a lot of time with over a few days probably become your friends very quickly, over that period of time. For example the majority of people at Bailrigg FM, I’ve only spent 3-4 days with a lot of them, but over thoose days been with them a lot. So people like Ali and Andy become friends.

What gets me is on the internet, a person wants to become your friend… I don’t get that. Friendships form overtime, they can’t be forced. I could list countless examples of people who I have just gotten to know over the years, Shariar^, Wagahai, Tashie, Daonie (god old nick eh? :), Quension, MSofty, Wisdom.

I’ve worked with all thoose people, we didn’t start off as friends, we either started off just chatting in an IRC channel, or we worked together and a friendship has formed.

Maybe Wagahai is the prime example of that, I met him when I joined the DALnet webteam for the very first time, I didn’t know him, I simply had to work with him to do the DALnet site. He was just another person (okey, I’m running far away from San Diego as I write this ;).

But over time, and I’m not sure even how, we’ve become friends, better friends, good friends, and today I hold Aaron as one of my best friends. I wont say love (’cos males can’t) but we have an extreamly strong “male bond”.

People who come up to me and immediatly say ASL, and want to know details about me, I don’t get. That’s not friendship really. Friendships can’t be forced, they just happen. It’s chemistry, just in the same way that love works, it can’t be forced, it just happens.

I’ve worked with a lot of people, online and in a real work enviroment, I know a lot of people, but I don’t class all of thoose people as friends. I just know them.

This is probably just a rant, but one I feel was worth making,

D.