Who're your online friends?

Do you have online-only friends? Of course you do. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have friends they know ONLY from the internet.

Do you remember the days when that was weird, scary, and considered dangerous?

Me, too.

And you know why?

Because I had so many awesome online-only friends with whom I am still friends with to this day and with whom I STILL keep in touch with on a regular basis.

It began my freshman year in high school (1999-2000). We were using America Online when I stumbled upon this great AOL-only site called "The Amazing Instant Novelist" (AIN). You can Google it and find out all about it, the creator, and other things. But I digress.

Within the AIN was a website called "I Was a Teenage Writer," (IWTW) specifically geared for teenagers who loved writing. IWTW was made up of a number of message boards, spanning from poetry to prose, politics to philosophy, and just about any and every thing in between. The purpose was for teens to meet other teens who liked to write and liked to think. I quickly met tons of wonderful people, and I quickly coveted an opportunity to work as a moderator on the site. Moderators had wonderful AOL screen names that looked like this: NOVeL YourNameHere. These folks had the responsibility to make sure all posts had some sort of response, feedback, or other action performed upon them. The point being to cultivate a real community within IWTW by ensuring everyone felt included. 

During my sophomore year of high school, a contest opened up for the chance to become a NOVeL on the site. Contestants had to have been active users of the site for a given time, as well as write an essay about American Politics. Fortunately for me, I won, and I had the awesome opportunity to be a NOVeL. 

Those were great times. I had the opportunity to be a NOVeL with some good writers around the country. I knew them not only for their writing, but I also knew most of their interests, career goals, college dreams, and full names/addresses. Those were times when it was scary and dangerous, of course.  But IWTW opened up great opportunities, as it was a way to hone one's writing, learn about new ideas, and perform community service. Likewise, because some of the members of AIN were publishers in the online and print world, there were publication opportunities -- one NOVeL got to edit a collection of teen poetry that featured a number of our NOVeLs and site users. 

Fast forward another year, and enter COPA. If you don't know what COPA is, Google it. What happened to this wonderful, safe, and encouraging IWTW community fell apart because all of us operating as NOVeLs were under 18 and subject to the rules of COPA. The site was disbanded, we lost our "titles" and responsibilities, and perhaps most disappointingly, we lost our safe and supportive corner of the online world.

Many attempts were made to keep us afloat. Because there were a couple of folks over 18 helping with IWTW who were pioneers in the digital book era, they set up communities on the greater web. One of those sites is the now defunct Teen Writers Dream, which, if you Google, you find many references to still. In an attempt to maintain its teen users, AIN set up a new teen corner, and all of us old vets were given the opportunity to rename it and make it fresh. Sadly, Graffiti on the Wall just never lived up to the IWTW site. 

Although we lost our community, it amazes me that nearly 10 years later (holy cow..) the core of us NOVeLs still talk with one another. Most of us are still LiveJournal users (and almost all of us began using LJ as soon as IWTW fell to pieces), many of us are connected on facebook, and when we get the chance, we meet up when we're in town. While I was in Denver in January, I went to dinner with a couple of former IWTWers who I hadn't met before. 

It blows my mind to think that I've been an internet user for about 11 years now, and it further astonishes me that I'm friends with people I met that long ago. Although it's never the same as knowing someone in person, we've all grown up together digitally, and I think forever, we're going to be keeping in touch with one another. One of the NOVeLs set up a facebook group recently, and it's interesting to see how people's paths have crossed, and it's nice knowing that there are people who are always looking out for you and making sure you're still out there doing well. While we're no longer NOVeLs, we've still got an awesome community. 

And it's totally possible to miss people you don't know personally. 

I don't think this is something people who never build friendships online can understand but I think it's something that my generation will be experiencing and dissecting in ways that are yet unseen.