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General discussion (archive)Half-way to 5 of something that means nothing(30 posts)(30 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 25, 2014
Back in October 2005 I started visiting this forum Football Manger Serbia as at that time I have really fallen in love with the Football Manager game series from Sports Interactive. It was a very interesting community and in March 2007 we decided to meet up. Around 15 people showed up. There was this one guy with whom I didn't have any kind of interaction in the forums but he was well known to be "a mafioso guy" in forum joking. At the moment we were handshaking at introduction I asked him "Where is your armored jeep?" and he replied with a smile "Yeah, my dad's Stojadin is parked in front of our building". The rest is history. After that meeting we started hanging out and step by step become best friends, went to vacation together in 2008 to Bulgaria and in 2010 to Macedonia, had many adventures and misadventures across Serbia, and attended countless wild parties.

This man is the closest thing I got to a brother and a year ago he moved to El Salvador because of his work so I'm missing him like crazy. We talk through Skype regularly but it just can't replace the weekend hangouts that were charging our batteries so much and so easily. Even though our connection seems unbreakable, I have a feeling we will never be close by (in the same country) like we were in the years behind us.

So yes, there is absolutely possible to meet people through the "web of all webs" and become friends with them in RL.
I have more friends from the above mentioned FMS forum, and we still hang out from time to time (more like from concert/festival to concert/festival :)). The funny thing, nobody from the gang visit that forum for years now and except from my brother from another mother, almost nobody plays Football Manager anymore. XD

I'll finish this post with the wisest words not coming from a world famous person I ever heard:
"Važno je da se mi družimo." eng. "The important thing is that we hang out."
You don't need to second guess who said that. ;)
Posted August 25, 2014
Congrats! :D
Posted August 25, 2014
Congrats on 4 stars Momo!

I haven't met anyone yet :( I also think there are few sites where you can hang out other than GOG. I feel everyone on here is a friend, and I'd really like to meet everyone in person, but for now, posting will have to suffice, lol.But really fun to read other peoples stories. Please post moar!

Not in, obviously.
Posted August 25, 2014
I wish i had your same luck finding your loved one online! ( or offline )
Anyway, good luck with your 4.5 stars : )
Post edited August 25, 2014 by phaolo
Posted August 25, 2014
Thanks for making me laugh, everyone! I adore love stories and friend stories and just plain stories too ;-) And I hope that this thread reminds you to find that email or that telephone number and reconnect....(and for those of you who have received "the invitation", babark's post is exactly why...)

Anyway, these days I'm in northern Pennsylvania for work. I'm not really looking forward to winter here but it is what it is!
Posted August 25, 2014
What a great thread to wake up to, especially after (mostly) taking a few days off from the forums. I've a lot of catching up to do! I'm not sure if this story would even technically qualify, but my wife and I met online, and we got along wonderfully, and what made us the most comfortable with each other initially was that we had both recently gotten out of shitty relationships, so neither of us had any interest in dating or relationships or "finding the one" or any of that. We were just great friends with a lot to talk about, and we realized more and more how much we had in common. As we live in the same area, we eventually decided to meet for drinks. We did, had a wonderful time, went back to my loft downtown afterwards and just talked until about 3am.

Finally, at around 3am or so, as we're sitting on my floor talking, she stops in the middle of her sentence with a gasp and starts looking at me wide-eyed. After a moment of confusing silence, she asked me, "did you used to have long hair and work at (a certain music store) a few years back?

As soon as she asked, I recognized her, and was absolutely baffled. Turns out she used to come into the music store I worked in 3 or 4 years before we "first met" online, and I had a huge crush on her. Being the shy type, I never said a word to her, but I told my co-workers that I was going to marry her one day. They would all give me hell for not approaching her every time she'd come into the store. Turns out much of the same was true from her perspective, and we both laughed our asses off for the rest of the night. We remained close and we both found that our crushes on each other found their way back, and we eventually found ourselves in a relationship, and then married a couple years later.

We just celebrated our 12 year anniversary on the 17th of this month, and we're somehow closer than ever.

I've met a few other friends in life online and then had the pleasure to meet them in person, and am still in touch with a couple truly awesome folks I first met online. A couple actually live fairly close, and have been "physical world friends" for so long that I'd even forgotten I first met them online until I started really thinking about it just now.

(Not in for the giveaway, by the way!)
Posted August 25, 2014
No matter how many times I've read the title, every time I open the forum I read "Half-life 5" and get confused and excited at the same time
Posted August 25, 2014
Congrats :)

No stories to tell. I've never met anyone. I'm not exactly the most outgoing person, whether online or in real life.

Edit: Not in for the giveaway.
Post edited August 25, 2014 by s17tabris
Posted August 25, 2014
i prefer to use internet as a source of data, information and for playing multiplayer.

and i find it very concerning people use the net (especially facebook, social media) as a possibility for moving parts or the hole social life to there. are proud of how much virtual friends they have, posting pics of their life, twittering about their life and so on.
Posted August 25, 2014
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Matewis: No matter how many times I've read the title, every time I open the forum I read "Half-life 5" and get confused and excited at the same time
*snorts a giggle*
Posted August 25, 2014
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apehater: i prefer to use internet as a source of data, information and for playing multiplayer.

and i find it very concerning people use the net (especially facebook, social media) as a possibility for moving parts or the hole social life to there. are proud of how much virtual friends they have, posting pics of their life, twittering about their life and so on.
Well I'm not big on the whole "social-media" thing myself but my sisters (whom I'm presently not talking to because they didn't share some pretty big news about the sale of all my dead mother's belongings by my step-father. I would never have begrudged him the funds to live out the rest of his life based on the sale of those items but I would have liked the opportunity to buy a couple of things from the sale - things that meant something to me that my mother meant me to have), are huge over-sharers on social media. I think TMI when it comes to crap that doesn't matter but TLI when it comes to important stuff are both equally shitty places to live. Now my relationship with both of them is in the toilet :-(

But a personal relationship via the internet can be extremely private and very fulfilling. As akhliber mentioned, the ability to get to know another person through what they write can be extremely powerful. It takes away a lot of the face-to-face, in person aspects and allows each person to think through what they are going to say, how they're going to say it and to edit, revise, think etc... It takes away a level of nervousness too. And ultimately by the time you meet face to face, yeah, there are some pheromonial aspects that can't be overcome but for most of us that don't have a need for their mate to be a super-model, the person you are meeting is already your friend - and ultimately successful marriages are truly based on being best friends with your spouse - you just really, really want to be with them ALL the time. ;-)

In some ways, the internet can be a time capsule experience when people wrote long letters to each other before they met or when they were apart. If you view internet dating as quaint, it's actually a kind of funny but very effective way to get to know someone....

btw, just for clarity - my hubby is a geek developer from the early days of code. He isn't tall or handsome by any magazine standard. But he is funny and truly loving and we have a blast together...and really, that he's all that and a bag of chips, in my book ;-p
Posted August 26, 2014
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akhliber: What a great thread to wake up to, especially after (mostly) taking a few days off from the forums. I've a lot of catching up to do! I'm not sure if this story would even technically qualify, but my wife and I met online, and we got along wonderfully, and what made us the most comfortable with each other initially was that we had both recently gotten out of shitty relationships, so neither of us had any interest in dating or relationships or "finding the one" or any of that. We were just great friends with a lot to talk about, and we realized more and more how much we had in common. As we live in the same area, we eventually decided to meet for drinks. We did, had a wonderful time, went back to my loft downtown afterwards and just talked until about 3am.

Finally, at around 3am or so, as we're sitting on my floor talking, she stops in the middle of her sentence with a gasp and starts looking at me wide-eyed. After a moment of confusing silence, she asked me, "did you used to have long hair and work at (a certain music store) a few years back?

As soon as she asked, I recognized her, and was absolutely baffled. Turns out she used to come into the music store I worked in 3 or 4 years before we "first met" online, and I had a huge crush on her. Being the shy type, I never said a word to her, but I told my co-workers that I was going to marry her one day. They would all give me hell for not approaching her every time she'd come into the store. Turns out much of the same was true from her perspective, and we both laughed our asses off for the rest of the night. We remained close and we both found that our crushes on each other found their way back, and we eventually found ourselves in a relationship, and then married a couple years later.

We just celebrated our 12 year anniversary on the 17th of this month, and we're somehow closer than ever.

I've met a few other friends in life online and then had the pleasure to meet them in person, and am still in touch with a couple truly awesome folks I first met online. A couple actually live fairly close, and have been "physical world friends" for so long that I'd even forgotten I first met them online until I started really thinking about it just now.

(Not in for the giveaway, by the way!)
That is a beautiful story about meeting your wife. Thank you for posting it.
Posted August 26, 2014
A very interesting topic, Momo!

I met my best real life friend on a website called Elwood back in 1998, it's an online fantasy art community where you can share your drawings and comment on other people's work, lots of fun. It was like Facebook but instead of food and cat pictures, people posted their creative works. My friend lived in a different city and we met for the first time in 2000.
A couple years later, he flew over to the US to visit a girl he had met online, another Elfwood member. The two of them had been exchanging countless emails and spent many hours on the phone together but had never seen each other's faces. My friend told me that she is "The One" for him and that he didn't care what she looked like because they had already formed such an intimate bond via verbal communication that he knew they were right for each other. I thought he was nuts but then I thought, well he and I had met online as well (in the exact same online community nonetheless) and became good friends.

They are now happily married and have three kids, the oldest one is in the first grade of elementary school already. And they live 10 minutes from my house here in Switzerland so I can visit them whenever I like.

Internet is not just ax murderers** & Co., you can make real friends too!

**EDIT: I didn't want to discriminate against ax murderers, perhaps some of them can be good friends, too
Post edited August 26, 2014 by awalterj
Posted August 26, 2014
Didn't they say you'll get a special reward for reaching max rep? Has anyone ever done that?
Posted August 26, 2014
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jcoa: Didn't they say you'll get a special reward for reaching max rep? Has anyone ever done that?
At least 4 people have reached the 5 star rank, but none of them mentioned getting anything extra. And it's not sure that 5 stars (2500) is the max rep, it may go even higher.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)Half-way to 5 of something that means nothing(30 posts)(30 posts)
(30 posts)