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Are we friends?


happi duck
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I call y’all my invisi-friends. To quote Mindy “Best Friend is a tier, not a person.” There are degrees of friendships. It’s OK to claim folks as friends even if they wouldn’t help you bury a body. I think of acquaintances as people who I see and know their names, but we don’t really have casual social interactions . . . we just happen to share space for some common reason. 

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However, I do have a confession that I probably shouldn’t make, but now might be a good time: I feel so paranoid! I’m aware that some here PM, text, etc. I always wonder if some are talking about others, whether good or bad, and that maybe they think I’m nuts, too. I get an uneasy feeling after I post sometimes that what I said was stupid, and I regret doing it. I post too much personal stuff here, and most people IRL don’t know all these things. I find myself hoping that no one is behind the scenes rolling their eyes at me. So there it is. This may be irrational, and I may be this way because of my life experiences. I don’t know. I try to ignore that, but that feeling is just there sometimes. I try to ignore it and participate anyway. I’m not accusing anyone! I think it might just be a me problem.

IME, PMs about posters don’t usually happen over gossipy things; at least not to me. PMs about posters are more likely to be how-can-we-help, except in the rare instance that someone was totally inappropriately cruel - then there may be PMs saying, “Just ignore that poster; she is wrong.” 

There was one incident, in all these years here, that a poster, for whatever reason, was totally furious about something I posted and came to my PM to light me up. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It was crazy. She blocked me and I blocked her; the board collapsed soon after and I think she stopped coming here. 

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Sure, feel free. 

I have very specific classifications for the use of friends, so I don't refer to my homeschool communities IRL and online collectively as friends, I simply refer to them as homeschoolers I know or my homeschool communities.  A few individual homeschoolers get classified as friends, but I wouldn't take issue to be lumped into a group of friends if that's someone's preference. Some people juggle geese. (Firefly fans understand that last sentence.) 

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On 9/6/2021 at 6:27 PM, Spryte said:

Sure! Friends it is. I mean, we’ve known each other how many years?!

I usually call you all people in my homeschool group, or if I’m talking to someone who knows I post here I’ll call you imaginary friends. I could go with friends, too, if it’s a casual conversation about Covid experiences. There are times you don’t want to head into details, it’s just not pertinent to the conversation. So, “oh, I have a friend in X state, who says the Covid surge has created hospital overwhelm, but no one is masking.” I could see that happening, too. You all are real people in my head, not random Twitter peeps or whatever. 

And some of you have moved offline into IRL friends, and I’m so glad we met! Waving at you.

 


 

 

This is how I phrase it.  

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On 9/6/2021 at 11:04 PM, ***** said:

Sure, as  long as you don't mind that I continue to stay anonymous. In case, just in case... my kids ever homeschool and join this forum, I would not want them to come across old posts and put 2 and 2 together. I am just private in that way. 

I have just learned that there's a new homeschoolers' facebook page in my area.  I don't have facebook or young kids, but am feeling a little exposed, if someone started reading here from my local community they could easily figure out who I am.  After years of lurking I finally made the leap to posting and now people from my town might show up here?  Wish it weren't so!  

I feel like some people here are my friends, some I'm a fangirl of, some I disagree with and still like to read what they are thinking.  I like the Hive title - I bet in real hives there are some bees that don't "like" each other but they're still working on the same project. 

When I reference what I've learned here, I say "I've been reading that..." which is entirely true.

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On 9/6/2021 at 7:53 PM, Indigo Blue said:

Happy Duck, you won’t believe this, but I was actually thinking just today how wonderful it would be if we could all be one large group of “friends” rather than just “people online”.

I love the idea. Like Garga, when I’m talking about this board, I always say “it’s full of smart people, they are talking about xyz thing, and they do their research. It’s the exact opposite of Redd🙂t and Facebo😒ok.”

However, I do have a confession that I probably shouldn’t make, but now might be a good time: I feel so paranoid! I’m aware that some here PM, text, etc. I always wonder if some are talking about others, whether good or bad, and that maybe they think I’m nuts, too. I get an uneasy feeling after I post sometimes that what I said was stupid, and I regret doing it. I post too much personal stuff here, and most people IRL don’t know all these things. I find myself hoping that no one is behind the scenes rolling their eyes at me. So there it is. This may be irrational, and I may be this way because of my life experiences. I don’t know. I try to ignore that, but that feeling is just there sometimes. I try to ignore it and participate anyway. I’m not accusing anyone! I think it might just be a me problem.

I do think there is no other place online like this and it would be great if we could all consider ourselves friends. Goodness knows, right now, more than ever, we need that.
 

 

Oh.my.goodness. Totally agree with you, here! I probably post way too much personal garbage here too, and many probably think I’m a bit nuts as well!  But this board (for all our bickering) is full of some of the sanest, most intelligent, and most thoughtful folks I have ever had the good fortune to “meet.”

Definitely friends.

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4 hours ago, Terabith said:

To be honest, I make a distinction.  If I'm talking about the Hive in general, I'll say, "On my forum..."  But people I don't interact with all that much, I refer to as "So and so (or "a person") on my forum" while people I interact with I refer to as friends.  

This. 

On my forum.

A person on my forum. 

A friend from my forum 

It's definitely not friendship in a general sense, but there are people here I'm friendly with.

It was more like having colleagues, tbh, when I was homeschooling. 

 

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I would count everyone here as friends. In the 15+ years I have been here, I have only blocked one person's posts. So, aside from that one person, I like you all  Even that person, I may have liked IRL for regular conversations, but they liked to pick fights by trying to make other people feel incompetent and I don't enjoy that type of banter!💜🙂

 

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I differentiate a bit between people I am friendly with (most people online and off) and those I am personal friends with (some people online and off).  To be a personal friend you do need to know a bit more about me than what I share publicly and I need to know you a bit more too.  That's the same in person as well, as I can be friendly without necessarily sharing more personal information. 

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