Who's On Your Buddy List?

     It’s a Thursday night and instead of going out like most UMBC students, my roommate and I are headed down I-95N to the bus station.  My friend was on his way in from Boston and we had time to kill before his bus got in so we stopped in the mall.  Luckily this gave me time to calm my nerves.  You would think having a friend come visit would be exciting, but for me it was nerve-wracking.   You see I had never met this kid before; we hadn’t even talked on the phone besides through text messages.

     We met through a mutual friend that I talked to online before exchanging numbers and talking all the time.  I know, this is starting to sound like the perfect start to a horror movie where the Internet stranger kills the girl, but I promise you I’m still living.  However after not even a year of talking, my Internet best friend Nick was on a bus from Boston to Baltimore just to meet me and visit Maryland.
     You see most of my friends I met on the Internet through a website called Tumblr.  My best friends come from all over the United States and overseas, and most of them I’ve never met in person but we talk almost everyday.  I guess I’m lucky that my mom isn’t that strict about what I do and whom I talk to.  I’ve gone out of the state to meet Internet friends, picked one up on the way to a concert in Chicago and this summer I’ll be flying across the country to stay with another before flying to another state to meet some more.  Everyone’s always so scared of Internet predators, but if you spend all your time worrying, where’s the fun in living your life?

WC: 299

The Point: Just because the world talks about the horrors of the Internet doesn't necessarily make them true, you would never imagine the friendships you can make just by going online.