In Defense of Cybercommunities (December theme) by Tracy Barrett

Some people are fond of saying that we’re so busy texting and tweeting and posting status updates that we don’t have time for “real” friendships.

I beg to differ. Through social media I’ve built up a group of friends, some of whom I’ve never met in person, some of whom I see regularly, most of whom fall somewhere in the middle—we might have met at a conference once a few years ago, or we get together once a year at a regular event. I count the members of this glog (did you know that’s what a group blog is called?) in that group of friends.

When I have a first face-to-face meeting with someone I’ve grown to know on-line, we can skip a lot of the preliminaries. I already know what’s important to them, what they find funny, what recent losses they’ve suffered in their lives, whether they’re a cat person or a dog person or neither. I’ve already cheered on their victories and commiserated with their setbacks. We can get right to the important stuff.

I found my wonderful agent through a referral from an on-line friend I’ve never met in person; I’ve gotten great writing advice and reading suggestions from others; I find my horizons expanded by the thoughts, jokes, and comments of almost all of them.

I don’t believe—and neither do a lot of social scientists—that on-line community is taking the place of the real-world version. For many, including me, each of those communities enriches the other. Community is where you find it.