Maybe it's just me, but I find the internet very tricky to navigate, socially.
 
I'm on a different social networking site, where the profiles can't be 'privatised' as much as myspace and facebook. So I find I often get messages - 90% of the time from guys - saying things like "I read your profile and you sound really nice and you're really pretty. I hope we can chat sometime," or "You seem like a really interesting person, can I add you to my friends?"
 
Perhaps on the surface, these are pretty typical, mundane messages to receive. But I just can't handle that kind of... I don't know, interaction. I mean, is it really so different from someone coming up to me in a bar and saying "Hey, I saw you from across the room and decided to come over and say hi"?? Not really, I suppose. But with the internet, everyone seems to make that giant leap from the hello to the let's be friends a lot faster. I find it peculiar. Let's be friends? Why would I be your friend? I've never spoken to you in my life, all I know about you is that you base your judgement of people largely off a picture on their profile, and perhaps a short list of their likes and dislikes.
 
I have "internet friends" on this other site that I've never met in real life, but who talk to me about their marriage problems, or their ex girlfriends, or being laid off at work. Friends who offer to buy me a birthday present when my profile announces my birthday to them through a feed. What? Birthday present? You didn't even know it was my birthday, but now you want to be me - a virtual stranger - a present? I mean, I chat to them from time to time. We shoot the shit in Games Forums or groups for people in LDRs. But I don't KNOW them. I've never SPOKEN to them.
 
So what it is about the internet that attracts these eager beavers? Is it just that people find it easier to open up about personal difficulties to an unbiased stranger? Maybe it's that the screen provides the distance and anonymity required to admit to being a bad parent, or a possessive girlfriend, or the husband who steals his wife's phone to check her text messages. Maybe it's the comfort talking to these people brings, that makes you think "yeah, I'm not that bad, comparatively." Maybe it's the notion that this hot girl (no, not me. random hot girl =p ) thinks you're funny and lavishes attention on you, when in the real world she wouldn't look twice at you.
 
It's a weird place. I've said it before and I'll say it again - after a few years 'online' I'm more convinced than ever that the internet is the worst possible place to make friends. Sure, I've been lucky enough to make a couple of really good friends. Thankfully (and ironically), the fates intervened to ensure I'd meet my fiance online. So I spend a lot of time online, talking to him, but I rarely communicate with others on any level that could be considered intimate. Myspace forums - complete strangers, News and Politics. I don't get involved in the in depth religion/love/sex/family/life forums. And aside from one exception, I've turned down every single friendship request that's ever come my way.
 
Yup... 86% of the time I'd choose awkward real life guy-in-bar situation over weird online private-message-about-hotness situation. The internet has it's good points, and it's of course possible to meet some of the best people you've ever known online, but I just think the 100 weirdos for everyone 1 friend isn't worth the hassle.
 
Thoughts?