Do you consider your SL friends "better" than your RL friends?

In the congressional hearing that Philip testified at today, one of the congresspeople brought up a study about this, and I'm curious how we all feel? Or to put it another way, if you could only have just one or 'tother, would you give up your RL friends to keep your SL friends, or the other way around?

No offense to anyone on my friends list but there is no comparison. RL wins everytime, no matter what the choice is. It has to.

Oh no! RL friends all the time, they are so precious and in short supply, in SL you can 100 have friends, but it doesn't mean a thing. My solution is that I make my best SL friends my RL friends, even if it means traveling to another country, (that sounds creepy and scary doesn't it LOL)

Um...none of the above? Friends are friends. I would NEVER give up my RL friends in favor of SL ones. But my SL ones are special as well, and some have even become RL friends.

I'm afraid the choices in the poll allow for only either-or...and I just don't see it that way.

I know my RL friends list isn't borked...the one's online are definitely online, and the one's that aren't, are dead.

Each of my set of friends exist for a reason - I would absolutely hate to have to choose, and, as long as I can keep an online presence with my online friends, I won't need to.

That, and a number of them are both online and RL...so, can't make that distinction.

depends on the friend we're talking about.

Easy to predict the poll result on this one.

With all due respect, this is sorta like asking if Batman could beat up Superman.



If you were in college with parties going on downstairs in the dorm hall every weekend and only had online friends, that would be pretty horrifically sad.

On the other hand, if you were a working parent who only had time for socialising after the kids were asleep, it would be pretty sad if you went out and partied all the time in the 'real' every night, after the kiddies were snoozing. Assuming you had the energy and the spare income, of course.

It's totally situation-dependent.

It's a whole lot easier to get to know people who are right in front of you on some levels - and a whole lot easier to get to know them in other ways online.

Whatevah. I'm sure there's even more unfettered honesty to be had if everyone walked around nakie too - but I'm not going to demand that level of revelation.

It's kind of a false question. I mean, it is like asking whether people prefer their SL lives to their RL lives -- it seems like a false dichotomy, even if our SL persona is different to some degree from our RL persona.

SL is something that takes place in our RLs -- we devote time to SL (RL time) interact with SL in our RLs, form thoughts in RL about the people we are meeting and interacting with in SL and so forth. SL is a projection of as much of our RL selves as we wish it to be, and we are interacting with similar projections in the context of SL.

At the same time, however, because the context permits the user to control to a much greater degree than RL does what of themselves they wish to project into the medium, it's not appropriate to compare the kinds of relationships that can form in SL with the ones that form in RL. That's not to say that SL friendships are not valid, but they are so markedly different from RL ones in their basis, and in their medium that they are a different thing altogether, and a comparison like the one suggested by the question seems false to me.

This doesn't apply to SL friendships that have a RL component to them, but to relationships that take place entirely within SL. These relationships are real, and are valid, but they exist only in one (and one rather limited) context. They are limited friendships like other context-based friendships are in RL -- many of us have "work friends" for example with whom we interact a lot with in the workplace, but whom we do not bring into the rest of our personal lives for various reasons. That does not make the friendship less real, but it does limit its context -- and asking a question as to whether one prefers one's work friends to one's personal friends (which is similar, to me, to the one being asked here) seems like a false question to me. The two friendship types are, by their nature, different -- and different by design. I suspect most people like both, but keep a healthy perspective about the limitations of friendships that are built around a more limited context.

Some people are pretty liberal with their definition of "Friend" also.

Which is going to skew how they think about it as well.

No brainer. Unless you're a burn-victim or a full amputee...I think RL friends are the obvious choice.

Was that too abrasive? Sorry.

Hows this-

Which one is a better friend?

The one you spend 2 hours a day talking to Online, who is always interested in you coming on ...


Or the RL "friend" who hasn't bothered to return your calls in 3 months cause shes "too busy".

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I'd have to say in more equal terms RL friends are always better. But not all friends are created equal.

Yeah, I don't think there's any comparison between SL friends and RL ones. SL friends can and do ditch you/disappear on a moment's notice, without even letting you know, and you really have little way of knowing whether they ever were who they said they were or how genuine their feelings for you are... plus there are many things that RL friends do for each other that can't be done in SL - take care of you when you're sick, cook a meal for you, givre you a huge or other little acts of kindness. Plus your RL friends see you in your underwear or at your weakest moments and you know they love you anyway - you can't hide from them nor do you need to. Not to say the same thing wouldn't happen with some of your SL friends if you could know them in RL, but distance often prevents that so it can be hard to tell.

Granted, there are some people who have a lot of anxiety around social interaction in RL for various reasons, and in that case, SL can be a great way to help scale those hurdles.

All that said, I might be a little unusual in that I'm pretty much the same in SL as RL, and I originally was roped into joining SL by some RL friends. Many of my RL friends and co-workers are in SL, which is nice because some of us live in different cities now. And some folks I've met in SL have since become RL friends or co-workers... mainly because I do pretty much the same stuff in SL as I do in RL: play music, work, do volunteer projects, hang out with my friends. So it makes sense to meet someone with similar interests whether I met them first in SL or RL.

Well of course not. But all SL friends aren't created equal either. There are those who don't answer your IM's, who only talk to you when they want something from you, who always have some kinda drama going on... etc.

I would say whether in SL or RL, those people aren't necessarily really your "friends" (and I agree with you some people have a looser definition of "friend" than others). Someone might be going through a phase where they're too busy to socialize much though, whether in RL or SL (I'm going through a phase like that myself) and part of being a friend is not taking it personally when that happens, understanding it's sometimes the way life goes and they are still your friend and miss you.

very true

Given that so many politicians insist on trying to put life into black and white terms when life is really infinite shades of gray, I'm not surprised this came up at the hearing.

I agree with Victorria's post down the line.

But, given the choices in the poll, if I HAD to make a choice between SL or RL friends, then the full blown, real life, warm blooded human being would win out every single time.

If I think of you as a Friend (with a capital F), then it doesn't matter to me where I met you. I have many acquaintances in RL that I am friendly with, but only consider a few as real Friends. I guess it depends on what you think the word friend means. I may know a lot of people in SL, and might have them on my 'friends' list, but so far, no _real_ Friends. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. If you use the same criteria in SL as you do in RL, then why not? It just depends on your personal standards...

But I would never refer to them as friends, that's why I said they are in such short supply.

SL friends can be fun. And sometimes socializing in SL is a better option than socializing in RL.

But virtual friends can never replace real friends. I like seeing real facial expressions, hearing real voices, and feeling real hugs. Deep relationships, I think, require physical proximity, at least sometimes.

I think it would depend on how you would define a friend. I like all my friends equally in RL and SL. A friend is a friend,no matter how you "met" them.

My question is "Why are our friendships any business of congress? Which idiot asked this question? Who is his opponent in the general election so that we can donate and help get this idiot sent back to the used car lot he occupied before being elected."

I don't believe that SL friends and RL friends can be compared in a 'better' or 'worse' way. They are different categories and each category has different benefits. Having SL friends is better than not having SL friends. Having RL friends is better than not having RL friends.

About the only comparison I can make is I 'see' and talk to my SL friends a lot more often, and I have a lot more of them. Hardly a day goes by when I don't 'see' or talk to several friends in SL. I have a handful of really close friends in SL and I'm sad if I don't see them all at least once a week. In RL I have two close friends, both of whom live 100+ miles away (in different directions); I might see them two or three times a year, and we talk on the phone now and then. (And no Michael, I am neither a burn victim or amputee However, I do have some neurological problems that make it difficult for me to meet people and make friends though.)

So anyhow -- I haven't voted. I don't think the question is valid, or at least, the available options are not sufficient.

-Atashi

"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies." (don't remember where I got that from.)

LOL good point!

Course maybe its all part of being a Kinder Gentler Bureaucratic Authoritarian Federal Government.

I don't have any real life friends. Sad, isn't it?

Woot! 1 of 2!

Anyhow... I prefer my SL friends, partly because they see me as I want to e, partly because of the diversity.

In SL I have friends of all sorts.. D/s, total nerds, fashionable peoples(Least for SL), idiots (In a lovable way =P)...

In RL, I have friends of the variety most commonly found where I live... either nerd (We seem to group together) or 'cowboy' types.

In SL, I also feel more connected to my friends, and am more open. In RL I'm rather shy to tell the truth, but in SL I will talk and listen and answer just about anything and not be embarrassed...


All in all I prefer my SL anyway.

ETA:: Thanks to Crystal for putting the intersexed/andro categories... eally surprised me, in a good way ^__^