I recently had a comment that has left me in thought…. a commenter said something to the effect that they did not have book friends in the “real world”.
Real world.
This is not about the comment, as the comment is great and I am in full agreement that there is a separation of sorts. It just got me thinking about the “real world.” If my home where I sit and tap tap tap away on my keyboard is the real world… then who are you that I tap tap tap to?
I have mentioned in recent postings that I am fairly new to all of this and I know I have a long ways to go and I actually love that I am still in the learning phase… and maybe I always will be.
Yet, I think – or maybe I hope – I have made genuine friendships in the blogging community. In the past two months that I have seriously book blogged, I have talked books with great bloggers who I know by name. Who in many cases I know by face. If I had a chance to meet them in person, I believe I could pick them out of a line up. And maybe that’s just the way I am wired…. I enjoy meeting people and I enjoy talking books…. face to face and computer to computer.
I have emailed back and forth with bloggers who have answered my questions, and in turn, thanks to those who have helped me…. I have been able to help others. Maybe I am not sitting in a cafe with a delicious mocha latte (uhh…no whip) in one hand and discussing the latest and greatest read with you across the table with the scent of coffee beans in the air…. but sometimes I feel that I am.
I am rambling. 🙂
The question I want to put out there is – what do you think? Are the book blogging relationships, relationships at all? Are they real to you? How would you describe this world?
Book Journey 
Yes, I consider my blogging relationships to be real. Now that I think about it, I might know more about some of my fellow book bloggers than I do about some of my co-workers!
I don’t think of my blogging relationships really any differently than my relationships in the “real world”. Some are only friendly acquaintances, some have become friends, and there are some at all the stops between the two. And I agree with Charley. There are bloggers I know better than people I see everyday at work!
Lezlie
I do think I have made genuine friends on the intrawebs, but it’s hard to really know how you’ll get along with a person until you meet them face-to-face. It’s also hard to “know” a person just from interacting with them through twitter or on blogs. So I don’t really think of the internet as “the real world,” no. I believe there is a temptation to do so, and this often gets people into trouble.
Very good points.
I say yes they most definitely are. Just because you’re not sitting at a cafe or hanging out at a local bookstore, doesn’t me you’re not having a real conversation, friendship, camaraderie with them. I’m real new to the blogging world but I’ve noticed a real community with book bloggers and I’m slowly but surely getting into it.
Hello, Sheila!
Yes, I do believe that book blogging relationships are very, very real. I think that talking about books in one’s blog is just the same as discussing them in a cafe, at school, etc. If anything, blogging about books and having discussions about them is great because these allow us to talk to people who are miles and miles away from us.
I’m a member of an online book club for several months, but I managed to join their actual book discussion only last month. Since most of the members are some of my blog readers, I felt a kinship with them already even before we met. When I saw them for the first time, I just felt I was simply reconnecting with old friends. I think this is due to the fact that they’ve been talking to me months beforehand through my blog.
Oooh, I love this question, because I often think to myself how I would love to have these many book friends IRL. I don’t necessarily think that my friendships with bloggers are untrue, just different. But you know, don’t we have different relationships with most people? For example, co-workers see us in a different light than say, someone you’ve been friends with since high school.
I’m working on my first year as a book blogger, I began back in January, and would love to meet bloggers that i speak with. How fun would that be, right?
ooh, I think I’m the person who said that! I said “in real life” but same thing.
I do think that online relationships can be absolutely genuine. (In fact, that’s how I mainly keep in touch with “real life” friends too, lol). I’ve had a livejournal for years and on there we always refer to people we know from our lives outside of livejournal as IRL or “in real life”. But my friendships with people on livejournal are very real… in fact I’ve met a couple people I met on there and we were able to pick up just like we had met in person before!
I also have friends from paperbackswap.com which is funny to me because it’s a book swapping site, but we play a lot of games and join in discussions and even though I haven’t met them in person, I definitely consider them real friends.
So I imagine I’ll feel the same way about book blog friends. I do feel that friends are made differently in the online world. It’s very much easier because there is less direct interaction. You comment when you feel like it and not when you don’t. You don’t always have that option in real life!
I hope I didn’t offend you with my comment. This is a good discussion though!
Hi Jenny,
No, you did not offend. If it was your comment, it just made me think about how people relate on line as they do in our every day lives. Many times I pick up ideas for discussions through what someone says or something I see. The comment just made me curious as to how the blogging community related to that. I spent many years in a management role teaching team building and I see a lot of that with this community of bloggers.
I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought. Thanks Jenny, if it was your comment, it got me thinking and that is always a good thing. 🙂
I do think relationships we build thru conversations on our book blogs are “real”. I do, however, use IRL to differentiate between a friend that I might discuss a book with over coffee (face to face) versus a blogging friend that I chat with via blog posts or email.
Similar to what someone else commented, I may know some of my book blogging friends better than my neighbors … and vice versa!
Being new to the book blogging “biz”, I believe I have started some great relationships. I feel I am slacking in the reaching out department (computer hitches, home stuff, you know) but those times I am able to reach out, there has always been a warm reception. I do not have many bookies in my “real” life, at least not as bookish as me, so this has been a great experience thus far!!!!
I’m fairly new to this book blogging biz too! I’ve found that the other book bloggers I’ve met in the 2 1/2 months since I started my blog are the nicest people I’ve ever met, online or anywhere else. I have found more friends and have felt more welcome among this great group of people than I have anywhere before. I feel my fellow bibliophiles are my true friends and I hope to meet some if not all of them in person one day.
I read this earlier today and had to come back to it later after I gave it some thought. I think that we develop friendships over the internet just as we would in real life. I don’t meet someone face to face and consider them my friend. It takes hours, weeks, and months to develop deep friendships. So I think you can get there over the net. But my family does roll their eyes whenever I talk about my “friends” and I’m referring to people I’ve never seen!
Hmmm…. I do use the real life/on-line distinction, but I think i can make as good of friends on-line as I can in real life. Actually, I’m probably better at it on-line.
I don’t mean those terms as a value judgment on the friendships, but as a way of distinguishing the groups of people (I also distinguish between my school friends, my moms group friends, and so on).
Thanks for making me think about this!
I’ve met a lot of people on goodreads as well as through book blogging, and I would say that I consider those people to be genuine friends. I’ve made genuine connections with those people and seriously enjoy speaking books with them. Not many of my IRL friends like to speak books, we just like to drink, so I think being so tight with online people gives me the best of both worlds.
I am new to all this, but I do think you can make real friends blogging 🙂
Wow! You have really opened up a great conversation here, Sheila…Because I spend so much time these days on my computer—blogging, e-mailing, writing—this has become my REAL WORLD. And sometimes I’d rather be here than out there! Which probably sounds crazy.
Okay, I’ve become a recluse of sorts. But because I enjoy interacting, I think that I am still socializing, and the contacts are very satisfying. And real!
But there is a difference, of course. I think about a friendship I had once (by snail mail), with almost all of our contacts via letter. Then when I met the person again and interacted face to face, I didn’t find the relationship as satisfying. So I got to thinking about it…
Online and in letter format, we have the opportunity to “edit” ourselves a bit. We can go back over what we’ve written, delete, add to, and otherwise reformat ourselves in our most flattering light. Like we do as writers when “polishing” our manuscripts.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing…but in person, we can’t always do that, and sometimes our interactions are complicated.
Okay…probably TMI!!
As you can tell, this whole issue has me going! I went over and blogged about this (I did link back to you!), expanding my thoughts on WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD?
See how you have sparked creativity here? lol…
Love visiting your site. You always intrigue and you always plant seeds that generate into all kinds of things!!
Great question. For me a lot of the relationships I’ve made via blogging are acquaintances but at the same time I’ve made a few that are -to me-real genuine friends. Friends that I would be there for no matter what. We’ve really built a great friendship. I’ve also had an online book club for over 5 years and those ladies are like family to me. So, yes I think you can definitely make genuine friendships via the online world.
To echo Darlene: Great question! As a student who is working on a thesis about online relationships and has taken classes about “virtual communities” and mediated communication, I struggle daily with this question of using “real life” to refer to the offline world. As much as possible in my own writing, I try to use “offline life” because I feel “real life” diminishes the realness of the online world that others have mentioned above, such as friendships.
As a society, we are definitely struggling with this balance between online and offline worlds, with some wholly embracing the former as an extension of themselves, while others view the online world as something to be kept separate, distanced, from the offline world, which they deem the “real world”. Yes, there is a lot of falsity online, but isn’t the same true offline? As Laura mentioned above, there are distinctions between different “selves,” if you will, in the offline world, so why can’t the online self have the same consideration?
Sorry for the lengthy response, but this is a topic near and dear to my heart/mind, so I love that you brought it up! And I could go on and on and on, but I’ll stick with this for now!
I agree that I have made some acquaintances and some friends in the blogging community. All my IRL friends get bored with my book discussions and some of you may very well get to know more about me then they do. I think learning a person’s opinions of literature and how they interpret it can teach you a lot about them. Sometimes something happens in a book I am reading and I totally wish I could call one of u!! LOL
Undine – what are you getting a degree in? Sounds like something I could get into.
Have to go see what Laurel on her blog now!
Alipet, I designed my own interdisciplinary major, which turned out to be a cross-humanities major, with none of my classes being in the same department! But my thesis is focusing more on Communications, Anthropology, English, and History.