19: Internet friends
A pause...and then I saw him pop up on my screen, eyes warm and crinkling, smiling widely. “Ahhhhh, there you are!” he beamed, clearly thrilled to see me. It made me happy. He was right: it didn’t feel like a proper reunion until we saw each others' faces. My internet friendships look a lot like my IRL friendships, but they lack corporeality, are impossible for me to get my fingers around. When we hang out in person, our offline interactions look a lot like our online ones: talking, analyzing, processing, thinking out loud, asking questions, reflecting, words, words, words. Our brains are directly wired into one another. Our bodily expressions are confined to heart-eyes, wow, angery, cry, or whichever limited faces our messaging apps allow us to make. We blow blue bubbles at each other. We convey our emotions through slang and punctuation, express our love through memes. Robin talks about making a messaging app for his family, with a grand total of four users, and the joy of building things just for yourself, much like a home cook as opposed to a professional chef.