@alyx @mischievoustomato this seems like a very cerebral take you people are taking. You develop feelings for a person because eventually you know how the person is, the nature of person. You know feelings

@alyx @mischievoustomato probably something to do with atheism this way of thinking

@BasedLunatic @mischievoustomato
There are some things I'm more old school, maybe dare I say it conservative, with. And if I don't see a person's face directly, their smile, if I can't shake their hand, or hug them, it just feels awkward for me to use the word "friend". I've had friendly feelings towards people online. Absolutely. There are people I like, who I enjoy talking with.

But there is something about the online separation that makes it different. I could close this account right now, make a different account under a different username somewhere else, literally no one would know, and I could instantly break every relationship I have here. That's not something I can do IRL.
Friends either know where I live, or know other friends of mine that do. I've got friends that know my family. I can't instantly break offline friendships by just changing a phone number and ghosting them. And the same goes the other way around. It's easy to lose track of someone online, it's harder to do it offline.
So as much as I might like someone, this ultimately tells me there is something fundamentally different between a friendly relationship here, and one IRL.

I don't think it has to do with atheism. I think it's a more conservative view of things, and atheism and conservatism are not that correlated.

@alyx @mischievoustomato I am driven by feelings when it comes to friends. It doesn’t matter if the person doesn’t know if I see the person as a friend. If I like the person, the personality, the humor and talk often, even without having seen the face I just see the person as a friend. In fact I find it being anonymous on internet you can forge more honest friendships on here, because you can open up like you couldn’t in real life

@alyx @mischievoustomato I don’t even have to talk often, I just instinctively know when someone is a friend. It’s not a thinking process

@alyx @BasedLunatic @mischievoustomato I mean you can say that and I'd agree there's something special about knowing someone face to face, but in some-ways I'd argue someone like my friend Otto knows me better then most people I've known IRL, that asides I've been ghosted IRL before even by my cousin so that isn't that different either lol. Wish I did know some of my internet frens IRL for damn sure

@Witch_Hunter_Siegfried @alyx @mischievoustomato dutch knows me better than my sister for example. He is on here

@Witch_Hunter_Siegfried @alyx @mischievoustomato but schizophrenia gives you ability to connect with people below the layers you have of protection. That's probably why he has that ability