I don't think I've ever become close to anyone in the "make them my Fannish Next of Kin on AO3" sense, but I've definitely gotten to the level of sharing full names and cities/addresses with people over the years. I agree with many of the above comments that a major factor was communicating outside of a group setting, such as going from a forum to AIM, Tumblr posts to direct messages.
A couple other things I've noticed:
- Since I started being active on AO3, every close friend I've made has been through comments there. They commented on my stuff, I commented on theirs, and then we started talking privately on another platform.
- From there, we usually became closer by talking shop and participating in the fannish gift economy. I've beta'd fic, co-hosted a podcast, been gifted somebody's spare merch, etc. I'm not great at the maintenance of online friendships, especially in early stages, so having responsibilities toward each other kept us in contact where I otherwise might have started forgetting to respond to messages. Like forestofglory said, I think this is the general struggle of building friendships as adults, not just online. If we're not stuck together in school or work, it's hard to stay in touch.
- I was talking recently about wanting to join Discord servers as a way to make more friends in post-Tumblr fandom, but reflecting on my own experiences and seeing the comments above, I'm starting to think that isn't necessary. Or rather, the image I have in my head is "join server, make 20 friends," but what's more likely to happen is "join server, make one friend, start talking to friend mostly outside server, quit/ignore server."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: June 23rd, 2019 06:36 pm (UTC)A couple other things I've noticed:
- Since I started being active on AO3, every close friend I've made has been through comments there. They commented on my stuff, I commented on theirs, and then we started talking privately on another platform.
- From there, we usually became closer by talking shop and participating in the fannish gift economy. I've beta'd fic, co-hosted a podcast, been gifted somebody's spare merch, etc. I'm not great at the maintenance of online friendships, especially in early stages, so having responsibilities toward each other kept us in contact where I otherwise might have started forgetting to respond to messages. Like
- I was talking recently about wanting to join Discord servers as a way to make more friends in post-Tumblr fandom, but reflecting on my own experiences and seeing the comments above, I'm starting to think that isn't necessary. Or rather, the image I have in my head is "join server, make 20 friends," but what's more likely to happen is "join server, make one friend, start talking to friend mostly outside server, quit/ignore server."