Lesliefoundhergrail: Online Friendships.

Leslie has done an excellent job of putting my thoughts into words.

It was a lot harder to leave VidCon this time around than last time. I hadn’t felt this much boo-hooeyness since my first gathering in 2009. That could have been because we were stewing in goodbyes for hours. Either way, it was really difficult.

Three years ago, I said in a long lost blog that my friends from YouTube are helping me learn so much about myself and the world around me. Because I’m exposed to different types of people with different lives, I’m more well-rounded as a person.

Online friendships take work, because you are given a challenge from the start. You must talk in your free time in abundance since there is no coincidence of just running into your friends in the same location. That challenge also makes you wade out the bullshit- you’re not going to waste your time on the Internet with people you don’t want to talk to. We are a lot more tolerant to those we see all the time at work, school, whatever. If you’re friends with someone online, that’s because you urged for that to happened, not from just being in a same location. Neither of these types of friendships are any better or worse than the other, but I think there’s something interesting about a set of relationships that required so much fighting against odds.

I also said three years ago that when I’m leaving these people behind, I’m leaving a bit of myself. I never understood why that was an actual thing until last night, when VidCon was over and I was at the beach surrounding a bonfire with 9 other amazing people. I wasn’t leaving just any random parts of me, I was leaving the best parts behind.

Have you ever realized a particular moment in life when you were being the best version of yourself? Most evolved version of yourself? Yeah I have, and I want to be that person every single day for all kinds of people for the rest of my life.

What’s so upsetting is that I don’t really know how to do that yet. And I really need Phil and Eric and Ev and Peter and Amanda and everyone else to show me what to do, even though they don’t know they’re doing it. They can’t always do that on my 15” laptop.

That sounds completely selfish of me to burden my friends with that yearning, but they really just have to be themselves. It’s crazy and amazing.

I don’t know, man.