Real Friends VS Internet Friends

Since I gain a lot of inspiration from reading tweets, sometimes when I’m waiting for that rush of creative adrenaline to hit me, I will spend a few minutes staring at my Twitter stream. Since I follow over 22,000 people, it moves fast and many times I am able to see full conversations between tweeple.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people will often ask, “How are you today?” And more often than not, the person they ask that to will tweet back, “I’m fine.” or “Great.” Then, usually the other person will respond the same. Are we really always fine? Is everything always going great?

I turned my magnifying glass onto myself. Sometimes when I’m on Twitter I’m definitely not fine or great, but I always tweet that. Why do we do that?

Is it because we are not all as close as we claim to be and we don’t want people to really know us after all? Is it because in social media, since everything is public, it forces us to be a bit more guarded? Maybe it’s because since we have to take the time to type a tweet, it allows for an additional filter to screen what we put out there. After all, we are constantly building our online reputation.

My friend, @iamkhayyam, sent a link the other day to a page that said this in reference to the topic:

“Sometimes, we are hurt and bruised and nearly completely shattered and this, sir, is not what one calls fine.”

Does this mean that we are not “keeping it real” with our Internet friends? Do our “real life” friends, the ones that actually know when we are having a bad day, still trump our internet friends?

I don’t think so. I am much closer to my Internet friends than my “real life” friends, hands down. There is no contest. Does that mean I’m a weirdo? Perhaps, and I’m okay with being called that.

At the end of the day, I’ve decided not to over think this whole thing. Twitter is my happy place, my la la land. It is a place where I can really connect with people and have a great time. And, yes, just for the record, I’m really truly am having a great day!

The picture above is of two of my Twitter friends and me. They are also “real life” friends: @allisonrebecca1 & @andreahrizk