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catpiecakebutter
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27 Dec 2022, 4:41 pm

Is it weird that I find making friends online is easier than in person? I wonder is that's common for people with autism, aspergers, or any disability or mental health issue.



kraftiekortie
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27 Dec 2022, 5:20 pm

I feel it’s easier for most people to make friends online than in-person.



Fenn
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27 Dec 2022, 6:18 pm

Please define what “friend” means in the context of “online friend”


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kraftiekortie
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27 Dec 2022, 10:33 pm

It’s true that “online” friendships tend not to be as close as “in-person” friendships.

A “Facebook” friend frequently is not a close friend. Usually, the “friend” is something like a “friend of a friend of a friend.”



Mona Pereth
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28 Dec 2022, 3:56 am

catpiecakebutter wrote:
Is it weird that I find making friends online is easier than in person?

Possibly because it's much easier, online, to find people who share your specific interests?

There's much more to friendship than shared interests, but shared interests do make it much easier to have companionship. (And, in some cases, depending on the nature of the specific shared interest, it can lead to comradeship as well as companionship.)


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Fenn
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28 Dec 2022, 11:57 am

People suggest to me that getting together with “friends” is important to my mental health. I don’t see how this applies to Wrongplanet people who often don’t use real names. It is hard for me to do in real life. I cannot think of anyone I would call up an ”get together” with, and trying to push myself in that direction increases my anxiety. Hard to know if that is a “just push past it and you will be glad you did” or a warning sign to be heeded.
Sometimes getting on Wrongplanet helps my loneliness or anxiety sometimes quite the opposite. I don’t do facebook.


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Fenn
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28 Dec 2022, 12:46 pm

catpiecakebutter wrote:
Is it weird that I find making friends online is easier than in person? I wonder is that's common for people with autism, aspergers, or any disability or mental health issue.


It is my understanding that part of the challenge of Autism is reading/understanding non-verbal communication (body language, tone of voice, unspoken rules) and also difficulty with writing/using non-verbal communication. This difficultly seems to matter less in some kinds of internet communications.


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