Being There- virtually

I have been reading blogs on another site, and they are very different from mine in that the bloggers' topics tend to be more personal; problems are presented, advice traded, this sort of thing. Though the postings are read by hundreds (number of views are tracked and presented on the blog), there is a core group who actually initiated friendships by reading and responding to each others blogs, and this group seems to have created a nice little community of people who care about and support one another and have a good time in each other's company on a mostly virtual level. These people live all over the country, all over the world, actually. From what I have read there, they are a thoughtful, interesting, diverse and broad-minded group of people. This is probably the point at which I should say that I only read the posts and responses; I don't post there or respond to their postings. I'm a lurker, not an active participant, not because they have excluded me, but because I haven't taken the initiative to join the conversation.

It's interesting that though many of us think of maintaining friendships through face-to-face contact, these bloggers seem quite content to befriend each in the "virtual" realm. Although I've seen a few of them make reference to talking on the phone, and some have even met in person, it seems they mostly communicate by writing and responding to each other through their blogs. At first glance, it might seem a bit unnatural, especially to those of us who haven't lived our entire lives with the internet as an ever-present medium. But I can assure you, being a high school teacher, young people don't find the idea of doing a great deal of their communicating through new technologies strange or unnatural at all. What may seem less authentic, and perhaps inferior, to some of us because it is "virtual," is in fact complete reality to hoards of teenagers. And I think it's important to remember that for a very long time, before the telephone and convenient travel that's a given to nearly everyone now, people maintained longstanding friendships through snail mail and very infrequent face-to-face contact.

Remember pen pals? Round robin letters?

Another thing I've noticed among this blogging bunch is that there is a certain ambivalence about it all. From time to time they discuss whether blogging is or is not beneficial, whether the amount of time they spend blogging is inordinate, whether it's healthy, addictive, has improved their quality of life, that sort of thing. Responses to these posts vary from those who enthusiastically state that their blogging is an important and valuable part of their lives, to those who seem less convinced, to those who say they have simply got to "cut down" because the time they spend blogging keeps them from participating in the real world, pursuing other interests and hobbies, and has an isolating effect, although they all seem to have interesting jobs, rich intellectual lives, and friends outside of their blog buddies.

So, what do you think? Are friendships formed and maintained through blogging simply a new way of meeting people and being together? Then there's me, who only participates by reading their posts and responses- the virtual version of a wallflower :)