The Companion 19: Meet my internet friends

Welcome to the world of online diary writing.

Movie still from Bottoms (2023)

It is all of a sudden March and I have been a rubbish friend. I’m sorry for ghosting. It’s been a busy time — in late January I began a fellowship at the University of Oxford which has somewhat upended my life. I’ve spent a lot of time travelling back and forth between here and London, making new friends and most importantly, researching how the media reports on missing people (I hope to write in more depth about ambiguous loss and what it’s like when a friend goes missing soon).

But anyway, onto today’s topic. A few weeks ago, I attended a brilliant talk with the writer Kiley Reid in Brixton. I loved her spiky, astute book Such a Fun Age, and was very excited to learn about her latest offering, Come and Get It, which is all about friendship and money. It was perhaps the first time I had been to a book talk entirely alone — the friend I invited got sick. But it was a charmed evening; not only did I learn about Reid’s research process, which remarkably involves a huge amount of interviewing, something I didn’t realise fiction writers often did, but I also bumped into a friend that I’ve had for over a decade but had never met.

“I bumped into a friend that I’ve had for over a decade but had never met”

I was in the queue for the book signing when I saw her — I did a double take and shook my head. She wasn’t even supposed to live in the same country as me, let alone be at this talk. But as I subtly moved closer and listened in to her conversation, I heard an unmistakable accent. It was definitely her. Would it be too weird to go up and say hello?

We’d originally met online, oddly enough, in a way that would make great fodder for a Kiley Reid book. Not through a popular form of social media, but on a semi-anonymised diary-writing website equivalent to LiveJournal, where angsty young women in the noughties proliferated. There was a whole gang of us from around the world who followed each other’s lives for over a decade, commenting on entries with commiserations, advice, and reprimands, until gradually the diary websites closed down and one by one we all mostly stopped writing, became concerned by privacy, grew up.

I was 14 when I began writing on these sites, and I quickly made a small but important web of online connections via them. I could tell you the names of their first loves, the dark thoughts they’ve battled, the best adventures they’ve been on. With just one of the women, Jenn (who you’ll meet properly later on), I managed to solidify our relationship early on — we would Skype, write each other long, pen-pal-like emails and even met in person. Quite wonderfully, she came and stayed in my flat in London about ten years ago and we’ve hung out in the UK and America a couple of times since.

I’m aware of how weird this might sound — the idea of writing a diary on the internet and making friends in the process — but it’s really not so different to how we engage with each other on sites like Substack. Whether they realise it or not, lots of people have internet friends. It’s something we should talk about more: how well those relationships do or don’t translate to real life.

Back to the book event. I decided to be brave. Red-faced, I walked over to her and said some garbled version of: “You probably don’t remember me but…” She grabbed my arm and said: “Of course I do! I spotted you when you asked Kiley a question”, and dragged me away from her friends so we could talk privately. It was a lovely conversation and we decided to grab dinner at a later date. “What a small world,” I kept saying, because it is. Really, what are the chances of us bumping into each other?

With dinner plans on the horizon, I think the trick is to not go into these IRL meetups with any expectations. Getting on well via the internet, even sharing your deepest darkest secrets, does not mean you will have an instant bond. It’s the Love is Blind paradox — that under the right conditions, you might be able to form a very real emotional connection, but that the context of face-to-face interactions can change everything, and loosen the threads of what felt like a stable relationship. On the flipside, I know from experience can it can lead to a gorgeous intimacy that you wouldn’t normally get on a first friendship date with someone. There are many things you’d usually have to explain that you don’t with an internet friend, and potentially even a shared language to use as a jumping-off point.

Jenn and Charlie in New York

Needless to say, I had a wonderful and candid chat with Jenn, a dear friend (and a brilliant marketing specialist based in the US) about our relationship, which I hope might offer some insight into the world of online diary writing, and be useful for those who are considering taking any of their relationships offline.

How did you originally find the first diary site we used, Open Diary?

Jenn: I assume it was from StumbleUpon, where they shuffled websites for you to explore. That's how I got every virus known to man on my computer. I was probably 16, right around the time when the internet was becoming more interesting. I think at that time, the two of us were just discovering what it was like to be able to give over all of our feelings in a medium where people would come back and be nice about them.

Do you remember the early back and forth with people who then turned into friends? Was the experience positive or negative or somewhere in between?

Mostly positive. The vast majority were women. I think I've met four of them in person now. And then I was aware that there were men. There was one 19-year-old guy, when I was probably 16, where maybe it would have become a grooming scenario. But he got weird and I got spooked. So the vast majority were women that were older than me, and super welcoming. Especially in college, when I was coming up against a lot of new stimuli and new situations, I would just say, to this group of like, essentially older sisters, what do I do? And they helped me navigate a lot of really hard scenarios.

I remember getting so much value from seeing you go through the things that I eventually went through, just a few steps ahead. You always wrote so beautifully, and still do write so beautifully. It just made me feel like I really understood you.

Despite you being younger, I feel like you've always been ahead of me with your emotional journey.

It surprises me to hear that! Maybe I was pretending pretty well.

When I was young, I really gave the full picture. You guys got every detail that happened. Like every true feeling, it was all completely, embarrassingly real to the point that I cannot go back and look at those entries anymore. And then as I got older, I definitely started editing a lot more. I would write the whole thing out as it was. And then I would edit out stuff that I didn't feel comfortable sharing.

What else do you think made those online diary relationships special?

You can be more open with your online friends because you don't have to say things out loud. You're not asking a friend directly for a reaction, you're just putting it out there to a group of trusted advisors, essentially. There's no clock on when you should get a reaction, you're just sharing this part of yourself and saying, like, when you feel like you can be a good friend back to me, please respond. Because of this, I do think there's some merit to written therapy. You don't have to hear it, you can just let it rip out of your fingers.

Do you think one of the reasons why we've perhaps stopped using the sites as much is because of the fear of people finding them? And if it's not just that fear, do you think it's also that thing of just developing stronger real-life relationships when we grow up, which means that we don't have to compensate?

It's partially because I'm a lot more open with the world, versus when I was writing a lot in high school and college, and my friends were made out of proximity. In my 20s, and now into my early 30s, I have cultivated friendships where I feel a lot more comfortable. I don't need the diary community as much. I also feel like, as I've gotten older, I’ve become less open to new friends on the internet because I know more about the dangers.

Why do you think it was important for you to convert some of those diary friendships into real life?

Different reasons. Sometimes it's for people, like you, where I decided ‘This is definitely a safe person. I feel comfortable letting you into my life.’ The great fear is like, what if the diary sector shuts down one day? Everything is completely gone. When we had the shutdown of Open Diary I lost 60% of people because either they changed diary names, or they didn't make the jump to the new site. There are still people that I think about; we were so close, was that even a real person? Yeah, so wanting to maintain the connection. But then also on the flip side, I think that's also when my writing stopped being so open because now I can't be like, ‘Oh, I'm, I'm so angry at my husband,’ because I don't want you guys to meet him and be like, ‘This guy!’

What else do you think your online friends have taught you about life?

I had one really big thought when I was prepping for this: I have almost debilitating empathy because of the diary sites, as I got to know people from their own perspective. I learned that some brains operate on the exact same wavelength as mine. It’s so endearing to read someone reacting in the same way as you. Those are the people that I very easily was like, ‘You're a good person, you can come over onto the real side.’ But, I don't know… I can't be mad at people in real life anymore. Because I just think about, like, what would their diary look like?

Do you have any highlights from your online friendships that you'd be able to share?

One of my best friends is somebody that I met from Open Diary. We've only met in person three times since I was 16. And I'm 32 now. I was there for the entirety of her pregnancy and her baby shower which was during Covid. I was in this virtual group of friends with her and I just had this realisation: ‘What a special thing that I've been brought into this person's real life in a very intimate moment.’ I was one of the first people she told when her son was born.

Have you ever felt any shame about how we interacted in the diary space? And do you think that we should celebrate it more, like, should we be more open about it? Because it's always felt like something I should keep very private

It’s how we don't usually tell people we are in therapy, even if we're doing it for ourselves! As a recovering Catholic, I do feel a lot of shame, just in general, because I’ve shared negative emotions on there. Even though we're talking now of like, how other people showing negative emotions have been very beneficial for us and makes us feel more human and makes us more empathetic. The diary world is an incubated community where you can get support, you can work through your emotions with people that if you don't want to, you never have to meet. And then you can bring your best self to the people that you know in real life. For people who are open to the process, open to learning from it and actually engaging and being real with what they're putting in, I do think that there's a lot of benefit to it. But if you're a person looking for a quick fix, this is not it. The benefits I got were from years and years of giving of my truest self. And then also this exchange of notes and learning about each other as people. It's also good for looking back on who I was and realising not only am I not that person anymore, but also that I've been through the same things. I react in the same ways to things repeatedly.

Yeah, it struck me when I read back, especially really old entries, how much I had forgotten about myself. One of the beautiful things about using it so regularly is that like, a whole life is laid out in rich detail in front of us. And that's why I can't quite give it up. That thing of like having a record of who you were and, how you became this person. And the relationships, because those are still important.

One of, the things that always struck me about how you describe your real-life friends in your diary is that you have always seemed to put a lot of energy into them. Whether that was organising amazing parties, or just making sure you were there for people in times of need. Has that been a conscious thing?

I didn't become that good of a friend until I was in college. But I have become more conscious of it as I’ve got older because people have pointed it out. At the risk of sounding like an embroidered pillow, I do believe that you get what you give. I send postcards when I travel because I love getting postcards. I like to throw themed parties because I love going to themed parties. On the whole, I think that I do intrinsically view being a friend as a hobby. And so I put in the time to make sure that I feel like these relationships are growing in a positive direction. It's whatever that plant needs 🌱

Thanks Jenn, anything else we should know?

When you write in an online diary, you are sharing the weight of need between a community as well as the joy. It's being a good friend, when you have the ability to be a good friend.