[strken]

I am a millennial with a few online friend groups and they're not really the same thing. For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent. People are continuously entering the group and continuously leaving never to be seen again. There's some level of trust and stability from meeting in-person that I can never seem to achieve online.

[lloeki]

> For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent

I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.

As for trust, is it really reasonable to trust someone more or less just because they've been in front of you vs not? And I mean that both ways: too trusting of people in front of us and not enough of people away.

[brailsafe]

> I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.

Probably true at some level, but I'd wager that's much more common for Gen Z and younger millennials for a variety of reasons, as well as among people who just aren't really authentic, suburbanites, and people who just don't invest in friendship building.

However, that's a bit of a silly comparison, online relationships have some value, maybe a lot maybe a little, but they aren't an equal substitute for a friend in meatspace

[strken]

I'm aware that most relationships aren't going to last forever, but the friends I have online are notably less cohesive than the friends I used to work with.

I make no claims to reasonableness. We are not creatures of pure reason and our friendships are never totally rational. All I claim is that there's something which ties offline friends to me and I to them, particularly if we've worked together, which is not present for any of my online friend groups.