Facets of Our Lives

I never met Michael Walsh in person. Our first connection was on LiveJournal, some time in late 2004 or early 2005. He was a friend of a friend, as most of my contacts on LJ have always been. His comments to a friend's journal piqued my interest, or my comments piqued his. In any case, we started reading the other's blog/journal, and this was how we got to know each other. I learned he was a librarian, living in Detroit with his partner in a house they owned together. He was originally from Ohio, and had an older sister named Ann. He loved food and sharing "food porn". He would take trips to see friends and it would be as much about what he ate as who he went to see. He was very social, and his companionship was valued by all who knew him. My view into his world and into the person he was came solely through LiveJournal at first, and then in 2008, through Facebook. I knew about his co-workers, the people he admired, the people he loved, the trials and tribulations o...

The internet has changed how friendships work. Through Facebook, other social media, even this blog, I find myself interacting with people I haven't seen, in some cases, in up to 30 years. In other cases, there are people I've never met at all, at least, not in real life. There was a time, when the internet was young, that telling someone you met someone over the internet was a source of embarrassment. Now it's just a matter of course. In my case, there has been a chain of connections, starting with someone I knew, which led to their internet contacts, which in turn led to their internet contacts. Only a small percentage were truly random, out-of-nowhere sorts of connections. I even have business colleagues that I have only ever experienced via e-mail, online chat, and telephone. It's become the nature of the world. So is this intimacy false? Some of the more uncomfortable conversations I have had online have been with old friends. It isn't to say that I am...