Can we be friends? Over the past twenty years, the notion of what friends are has changed. When I was growing up, a friend was someone you met and routinely had contact with. They were someone you knew and whose house you frequented. Since the dawn of the digital age, the definition has changed to include someone you merely come in contact with online. Is a friend on Facebook, really a friend? Over the years, I’ve met a number of people online and had deep meaningful discussions with them. In fact, in some cases, the topics of conversation were more vast than what I was able to have in person. The way we communicated through online videos and chat was as real as a face to face discussion. In fact, when we finally did meet, it was as we were old friends and not strangers. I put forward that in the digital age, one can have deep meaningful connections with others through the Internet and other means of communication. However, is simply “friending” someone classify them as a friend? It’s a question that has come up more than one in legal circles. What do you think? Has the definition of a friend evolved in the digital age or are we reaching out to find new ways to communicate as many become more isolated behind a screen?
This was another My Life Vlog; however, this one is a little different. The intercut scenes are actually from a Vlog on the other channel:
I chose to use this for the topic of conversation, since I’m always amazed when individuals have their feelings hurt when someone unfriends them on Facebook. These are often when someone doesn’t speak to the person on a regular basis or even considers them to be a true friend. But the action of unfriending them seems to affect them as if they had really lost a friendship. I included my “unboxing” of sorts for the clips to demonstrate that true friendships can develop online.
