I’ve kept my real life separate from “my Internet life” for more than a decade now.

On sites that I have both groups of people friended from, people that I know in real life tend not to want to interact with people that I know from the Internet at all and some have even gone so far as to express varying degrees of discomfort doing so. I try to be as respectful as I can, especially in situations like that, so of the only social networking page where I have both friended — Facebook, at least as of right now — I have filters so that no one accidentally “runs into each other”. (The one exception I made to this was decades ago when I actually pursued a long-distance relationship, with everyone indicating that they liked the person after I took the time doing what I thought was getting to know him — this is the one who I had to turn in multiple members of his family (himself included) to law enforcement after… finding certain things out, as I was left absolutely no choice. This floored everyone that knew, or had known, about him, and they alleged that they “had no idea” that he or his family could have been like this. But from that point on I became a lot more judicious about separating real-life friends from “friends on the Internet”, and then I drew a firm line.)

I’m hoping that if I can ever move somewhere that is more tolerant in general that I won’t have to do this.

But back when I hadn’t completely separated the two groups, I could tell that any time I brought up a friend from the Internet (“friend from the Internet”) it was regarded as less than… or in some cases, not even at all.

As a minor, using the Internet I was not allowed to…

· give people my full name (this eventually became just my full last name, but not for awhile)
· reveal anything about my location
· accept anything in the mail from anyone that I didn’t know in person, so I couldn’t have pen pals
· give anyone that I did not know in person my phone number, not even my own cell number
· call anyone that I did not know in person
· meet up with anyone that I did not know in person

My mother was more than happy to let the Internet “babysit” me so that she didn’t have to do it herself, or engage with me herself though. (This has been common knowledge for a long time and explains many of the disparities that I had in Internet rules growing up. Almost all of them, in fact.) But it seemed like the one thing that both of my parents agreed on, which I have mixed opinions on, were that my Internet friends were “not real friends” and were “less” friends to me than my real-life friends. Living where I do, and living where I continue to live, this seems to be a mindset that a lot of people I know have… but I’ve made it a point to separate my real life from my “Internet life” for years and have functionally been doing so for more than a decade now, mainly because of the people that I know in real life. I think this says more about the people that I know in real life than it does most of the people that I know online. For the most part, I hate this place.

In case some people have been under the impression that I might have changed my mind over the decades, or that “the right person” or “the right people” might make me change my mind on the matter: it’s as resolute as ever, and I’m as stubborn as ever. It doesn’t matter that it’s nearly 2022 and “nearly everyone is doing it”. I continue not to make it a point to meet up with people from the Internet because it’s not something that I am comfortable with, although I might make exceptions for certain people that I have known for more than a decade that I can count on one hand… at a later time in my life. Conventions like TwitchCon and VidCon — and yes, I mean actual conventions — might also be other exceptions once the pandemic is well and truly over, but a lot of that stems from my trust of how Twitch runs the majority of the services that they provide to people and the good things that I’ve continued to hear about VidCon, my refusal to attend a convention in the midst of any semblance of an active pandemic notwithstanding. If I don’t have to meet up with someone from the Internet in person — I mean, food and transportation services can be useful — it’s not something that I want to do right now. I exercise a lot of caution in that regard, and it’s something that I am not exceedingly comfortable with. (And of course, by that I mean “people who are not at all local to my own”.)

Growing up, the really good thing about my Internet usage was the limits that were placed on it that remained consistent — as a child, I was not allowed to give my full name to my friends at any point, and of those former “friends” who maliciously attempted to exploit real-life friends of mine to try to trick them into giving them more information on me than they were allowed to have, I was no longer permitted to speak to. As a minor, I wasn’t allowed to meet any Internet friends, and as long as the whole minor thing applied I wasn’t allowed to call them either. These were just things I knew better than to ask permission for. I feel like my parents took Internet safety as seriously as they should have and set age-appropriate limits for it, and that molded me into someone who became a lot more cautious about what I expected out of the Internet, even as an adult who was free to make my own decisions (and perhaps even parent differently there, too).

I may get into the “parenting decisions relating to the Internet” thing later to give that more space of its own.

Compared to my real-life peers and school friends, though, I was generally allowed to do less on the Internet while I was growing up. And like I’ve said, it’s not something that I’m frustrated about, mad about, or regret. I didn’t begin making friends online in abundance until I was an adult due to that, though (not even as an adolescent). Although I had friends online growing up, my interactions with them were generally curtailed.