The online world makes it very hard for many to realize the kind of attention and dedication that friendship needs. I am noticing an increasing trend where more and more people are claiming for have friendships, yet many of those people simply treat others like business transactions that focus only on money or actual selfish value and nothing else.

One of my closest friends is someone I know only from the online world for about 7 years, and we talk either online or on the phone, while mailing each other stuff also. Just because of that friend, I know people can be good trustworthy friends regardless of the medium of friendship, online or offline. Similarly, I have met a lot of people who have given me nothing but headaches, and these people specialize not only in headaches but also in bringing their offline problems to the online world so that they can dump such problems onto others, so that they themselves can be happy while others suffer. Still, many other people simply focus on earning money, and call anyone who can help them earn more money their friend.

5 random bad trends of online friendships

I would like to list below 5 random bad trends of online friendships that I have experienced myself directly.

1. Business transaction means a friendship in progress

   Almost every few days I hear people referring to their business partners or people they are doing business with as friends. It is funny how for such people, the existence of money or business contract or knowing someone famous automatically results in a friendship bond being born.

   People do not know each other’s secrets, each other’s good and bad personal things, and people cannot rely on each other outside of business. People do not care about each other’s happiness or suffering, and no one is willing to make any sacrifice. Yet, such people still call their own kind of people online friends. It is hilarious. It is pure nonsense.

2. People do not know what others expect from the friendship

   A lot of time people who are immature or confused or a combination of those things will get into online friendships and not realize what they want. In every friendship, there should be a small sense of what each one expects from the other. Things that can be expected may include, but are not limited to, trusting each other with secrets, having someone to cheer the other one up in bad times, having someone to help each other during bad times, helping each other achieve something, etc.

   Simply texting or writing one another e-mails seems ok, until someone gets upset about something or until boundaries are crossed. Then, instead of knowing how to apologize or how to let the other person know their personal thoughts so that the friendship can continue, people argue while sticking to their pride and while not realizing that their online actions can also hurt others, both in and outside friendships.

3. Good and bad things related to friendship do not get enough attention

   Some people simply ignore the signs of bad things in an online friendship. Similarly, some people simply ignore the good things in an online friendship. While it can be considered all right to ignore things, a friendship cannot continue until different good and bad elements about it are kept in mind.

   Your online friendship may consist of one person feeling really happy, while you may simply act normal. That can hurt the other person. Your online friend may be really sad because of any random factor, even if that sad person is the one who is always cheering something up. If you do not notice such a thing or do not react to it in any manner, then you have to explain to yourself why you consider such a relationship to be an online friendship.

4. People focus on the online mediums of communication, instead of the friendship itself

   Majority of the online people that I see and run into focus more on the online tools of communication instead of friendship. People focus more on MySpace, and not on MySpace friends. If an online friend deletes their social networking site, all their so-called friends stop keeping in touch.

   A person has to focus mainly on the friendship, and not only on the medium of communication in a friendship. Focusing only on the medium of friendship will result in friendship being reduced to only an online way of using communication tools where we all pretend to have friends, when in reality we do not act like friends. Greeting each other is not a sign of friendship, by the way. If you follow that rule, you can automatically realize that majority of the so-called online friendships are in reality mere interaction sessions between strangers and nothing more.

5. People give friendship advice simply because it is easy to do so online

   This can be the most deadly trait of all traits. I am noticing more and more people giving other people friendship and relationship advice. People start giving advice simply because they are asked for advice, or simply because they feel they can type a lot. Any friendship or relationship advice must be carefully thought of. Many people do not realize that giving advice in situations such as online disputes means that we have to consider all sides of the story.

   Many times, people go online and read a supposed friend’s site or something, and start giving advice without asking any questions or without thinking much about it. Even more stupid are the people who actually take such advice. Would you rather think on your own, or would you rather take and follow the advice of an online person who knows nothing about you, who is only giving advice to pass time, and who does not even care about checking later whether or not their advice helped, or whether or not they should feel responsible for something that happened because of their advice.

The above are 5 random bad trends that I am noticing more and more people follow online. From calling people who give us money friends to not knowing what to seek in a friendship, to not paying attention to important things, to focusing more on the online nature of friendships than the friendship itself, and giving advice simply because it is easy to do so, all of these things contribute to the the concept of friendship being abused more and more, resulting in more fake friendships where friends do not sacrifice anything for someone else. Have you noticed anything similar in your own experience?

What do you think? Thanks for reading.