Online friendship implies when individuals become Friends with one another via the Internet. Their meeting point could be social media or websites or other forms of communication. Online friendship has both good and bad sides. In the course of this write up, I would like to share some practical experience that my cousin told me.
Online friendship can be meaningful and of great support but one of the disadvantages could be due to other factors which might include lack of physical presence and no clue of in person relationships. Online friendship or relationship might be vague because both friends have no physical accessibility to each other which might affect their relationship in the course of time. Online relationships could emanate as a result of playing games online. With the advent of sophisticated technology, there are some games that would create a premise for friendship by playing together on the same site or playing similar games together. There are stories of many people that met themselves as a result of that. Whereas others connect with Friends from social media handles such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. It could be as a result of accepting friends request or perusing the platform. I have heard of several accounts of people that were connected via social media and even ended up marrying each other. Another form of platform that creates relationships is the forum of friends online or community of friends. As the year is climaxing, many of my friends are getting married hence platforms were created for us to discuss the way forward. I have joined countless of forums that gave a deep output. Though I am married but there are many other people that met their life partners online.
The good and bad side of online friendship. One of the major points I would like to share is that online friendship enables people to be connected no matter how the distance is across any part of the world. It's very sharp and easy. It might also be very easy for some people to manage compared to the one that is offline where there could be high demand to buy this and that. The bad side of it is that you won't be able to see the person physically. You wouldn't the true picture of your friend. There are some that have one level of facial challenges or the other but they could use AI or other ICT tools to make themselves look better.
There is great flexibility when it comes to online and it's connected at any appointed time. The big question still remains can online friendship replace the need for facial friendship? For me, online friendship can't just replace the face to face because of the significance that the physical carries. There is power when two people can see themselves, it would boost their confidence level and believe in one another. When I was courting my wife, she was serving in Osun state where I remained at the middle belt of the nation. For almost a year it wasn't funny because my stand was tested virtually. I can't see but I kept tap on the communication schedule always.
My cousin wanted to marry a white lady that he met on Facebook. As he began to make positive moves, the lady wasn't comfortable. To cut the long story short, the relationship ended in dreadluck where both parties parted. The relationship that lasts much more is offline compared to offline.
Thanks for reading through.
#### all pictures are mine