When meeting folks you've only known via the internets is discussed,
people's expectations tend to fall into two camps:
Here there be ax murderers!!!
or,
sounds like a party!
I fall in the latter group.
I've made internet friends over the last eleven years, and it's all because of this guy:
Max Fischer, have my babies.
I adored the movie Rushmore, so when Wes Anderson's third movie,
The Royal Tenenbaums was getting ready to come out,
I went internet sleuthing for some info.
I first came across The Rushmore Academy...
... and then The Yankee Racers.
These forums taught me a fundamental fact about the life on the web:
You can get very comfortable and friendly with people
with whom you initially shared nothing more
than an interest in a movie or TV show.
"YOU like the short-lived, live action Tick television series? I do too!"
After some technical difficulties with my beloved Yankee Racers
pretty much ended that forum,
I drifted over to Television Without Pity.
I noodled there for a year or two,
until I became deeply, fiercely infatuated with season two of The Office.
(If I ever could have french kissed a show, it was this one.)
The Office forum had a "Meet Market,"
a thread where fans can just chat about anything and everything, related to the show or not.
And chat we did.
In the Chili's Meet Market thread we discussed important topics:
babies and jobs, sex and abstinence, death and marriage;
where we stood on gun control, the health care act, and marriage equality.
We also wrote about topics a bit more trivial,
such as whether caramel or chocolate is better.
(NO CONTEST: the answer is "chocolate.")
Several years ago,
I met one of my local Chili's Meet Market peeps in the real world and we've become friends.
So when we were presented with the opportunity to meet
a third, out-of-town friend at Disneyland,
we were enthusiastic about the prospect.
It was odd explaining why I needed a day off...
(... "I've got this friend... I want to see... at Disneyland?
Whom I know from... the internet?")
... but I had vacation days, so Dan and I carpooled to meet Julie.
"Howdy, folks! Welcome to the Sweatiest Happiest Place on Earth!"
Despite a temperature that was only slightly lower than the surface of the sun,
we had a great time.
We talked, rode rides, sweated,
talked, sweated, ate,
sweated, talked, shopped,
talked (and sweated) some more.
And although we couldn't first recognize each other in a crowd
without specific descriptions,
("I'm in the lavender shirt, at the Jolly Holiday Restaurant,")
we were as easy with each other as folks
who had spent the last seven years meeting over coffee instead of online.
So here's to internet friendship!
It's (mostly) not creepy.
