My Internet Friends and Me

While a majority of grown-ups and people who were raised on something other than the great and power World Wide Web are hesitant to venture out into the not-so-safe areas of the cyber universe, I can say that I have been there and done that, and you what I figured out? Every adult who has ever told me that everyone on the Internet is a pedophile was lying to me. They all told me about the dangers of talking to strangers on the Internet, and I nodded in agreement, but my impressions of the lurkers of the Web quickly changed when I finally swam out and ... touched the butt.

When I was about 13 or 14, I got really into web design and web coding (because what 13 year-old girl doesn't love twiddling her fingers in Paint Shop Pro and CSS coding?). I fell in love with my hobby, and started looking for places to showcase my skills and knowledge. I joined staff teams for a few websites (run by young people) that specialized in graphics for, and don't you dare judge 13 year-old me, Neopets (yeah, like guild layouts and user-lookup layouts. I told you not to judge me). This gave me tons of practice to learn new coding and find new brushes and styles on Paint Shop Pro 9 (because I couldn't, and still can't, afford Photoshop at the time). Eventually, towards the end of 8th grade, I talked my dad into letting me buy my own domain and get paid hosting so that I could have my own website to offer graphics on. I called it InsaneTruth.net because I was lame and weird but thought I was insanely cool.

One of the last pieces of graphic design I did during my prime
(click for bigger view)

Anyway, around that same time, I had an affiliate (basically link 4 link, now) on my site and she had a message board (or mb if you want to be hip) called Splash MB on her domain. I joined it because why not? It was there that I ended up meeting my genuine best friends during high school. Everyone on there was between the ages of 12 and 18 and primarily female (with the exceptions of some...
questionable characters from the UK).

We all grew together and had inside jokes and leaned on each other during hard times and, yes, there was drama. I learned how to write fan fiction and about British television and who Gaspard Ulliel was. We fangirled over Twilight together... and then later hated every single aspect of it. Oh, and there was a fictional dude named Pedro, but that's a story for a night when I'm really drunk and full of pizza.

Eventually, the message board died, but I continued to talk to a couple of girls every single day on a website called Plurk (it's like twitter, but lame). We skyped, added each other on FaceBook, discovered Tumblr, and continued to grow as young women together. During late night skype sessions that were filled with gossip, innuendoes, and laughs, we put ourselves on the line and secured our most private secrets with each other. My life became full of sexy jokes about geometric angles, secret chatter about the French exchange douche, and Ringo Starr's dramatic plead for NO MORE FANMAIL. PEACE AND LOVE! We watched TV shows together and freaked out over bands (even ones each individual didn't care for... we just supported each other's interests no matter what). We had it made. We had a time...

Always and forever

Honestly, these girls probably know more about my four years of high school than I remember. They know every crush, every geometry class scandal, every single time I was blocked on FaceBook, every Jonas Brothers concert I ever attended, and even about the first time I fell in love. For someone who doesn't easily trust or open up about anything, looking back, I gave a lot of myself to those women.

We don't talk like we used to anymore. Some of us went off to college and started new lives that didn't allow us to spend every waking minute online, and others just matured out of the awkwardness of being in middle school and early high school. We're still FaceBook friends who wish each other the best on our respected birthdays, we follow each other's Tumblrs, and every once in a full moon, we catch up on each other's lives as if we never stopped talking.

You can say that online friendships don't count, but I'd like you to think about what makes a friendship. Is it seeing someone in person? Is it being in the same city? Being able to hug the other? No. Its none of those things. Friendships are made on trust and laughs and common interests. Distance means nothing. And that's what I had with these beautiful women.

So, thank you, Ale, Jellaw, and Roni. You guys will forever be in my heart. <3