I've met a number of people in real life who I have known from other forums, but Bluelight is the only online community where I have actually become good friends with the people I've met.
I have quite a number of good friends (including some that I consider my closest personal friends) that I initially met through, or at least because of Bluelight. Having said that, I can't think of any of them that I would have considered actual friends before I met them in real life and formed the bonds of friendship.
While there were some that I became friends with after meeting them by chance, obviously there was a number that I actively went out of my way to meet because what I knew of them on line appealed to me for one reason or another.
I tend not to actually form much of a relationship with people that I only know online and have never actually met. Most times is has been what I know and think of a person through what they've shared online that has compelled me to make the effort to meet them (often despite little or no actual online interaction beforehand).
On the whole, the real friendships that I have made through Bluelight have continued to grow and strengthen offline rather than on. Contact and communication will often take place online for convenience (through anything from BL, facebook, Messenger, email), but the actual friendship exists very much in real life.
Ok, so after all that rambling, I should probably just answer the damn question....
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Do you think people's social lives are influenced a lot by forums and other internet sites, or is it more just a way of keeping in touch with people you already know?
Communication between people you already know is being constantly changed (and enhanced?) as new online sites/tools/gimmicks become available, but I think the impact is far greater than just an alternative to phone calls or letter writing.
I think peoples lives (and not limited to just their social lives) are becoming more and more heavily influenced by forums and communication sites like Facebook, myspace etc. It's really not unusual any more to hear that people met their friends/partners/creator online. Even a decade ago if you heard that, most peoples first thought would be of desperate singles and online dating.
The effect of having discussion forums and sites with a specific focus (such as Bluelight) is that you can encounter likeminded people that you would never otherwise even know existed. So immediately your potential friendship circle is both widened to include everyone with internet access, and narrowed down to people with who you at least have enough in common that you found the same site.
And of course with the safety-net of the keyboard and cyberspace you can engage a total stranger in an in-depth conversation, or argue with them about the finer details of a topic that only 15 people
in the whole world care about without any of the social wierdness that doing that sort of thing in real life can cause.