I met my BF online, but I think that's different than an "online friend". We exchanged a handful of messages for maybe 2 weeks, then met and developed our relationship IRL. I think simply meeting someone online makes little difference from meeting someone in person.
I have taken a few online friendships off board, and they are great people. But none are people I actually felt close to online, we met because of proximity and they ended up being nice. I have a number of favorite posters here and care about a large number of others, and feel like I get a lot of support here which is awesome. But I hesitate to call many of those people true friends. Objectively, we just are too far removed from that. And most conversations here are disjointed... Many people are involved and when I say something, its not always in response to someone else and its not always acknowledged so I feel funny even calling much of what I do here " friendship". On the other hand I spend more time here than with any IRL friends and value the time and people. So. Maybe what I am saying is that internet friendships are too different to compare to IRL friendships, but they both have a unique value in my life.
If I've learned anything over the last couple of years it's that my friends who live inside my computer are sometimes more real than the ones IRL; capable of making me happy and grateful but also capable of hurting me more than I imagined.
Definitely. We had an AE on our local board who was extremely hurtful to several of us. The last time someone brought it up there was a big discussion and there were several posters who said they couldn't understand why I would be hurt by some "internet randoms" and that I should just get over it. Um, because the people behind the AE weren't "internet randoms." None of the people on the board were internet randoms to me. It was a sad day.