This has nothing to do with Deliverance. The full sentence is that on Super Bowl weekend, I spent 4 nights in a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin with 5 other guys. I’ve known these guys for 13 years but I had never met them face-to-face until Super Bowl weekend.
This post is not to regale you with tales from those 4 nights. The only other context I will give you is that we just played board games and Magic the Gathering (your basic nerd stuff) while drinking. Every. Single. Day.
File A Missing Persons Report!
As I said, this post isn’t specifically about the events of that weekend. It’s what that weekend represents, sociologically. The key phrase in the paragraph above is “I’ve known these guys for 13 years but I had never met them face-to-face”.
This would never have happened 20 years ago. If I said I was going to drive to some remote cabin in the woods to meet up with 5 other guys I met on the Internet, I’d probably never be heard from again. My wife would be filing a missing persons report within days (assuming she even let me go in the first place) and reading my life insurance policy. It’s an indication of how the world has changed since video games became more social.
I Suppose Facebook Helped
I guess I should give social media some credit too, as much as I like to bash it. I am friends with a couple of those guys on Facebook and I have been for a couple years. Admittedly if it weren’t for World of Warcraft and Discord, Facebook and text messages, this would never have happened.
In a post I wrote almost 10 years ago I said “its a little naïve to think that a friendship can only exist if you have met physically”. This is especially true now because we live in a world where we’re not constrained by borders. I didn’t need to have met those guys in person to know I was going to have a good time. We got along like we’ve known each other … well, 13 years! And I would do it again! But that’s just me.
I am curious though. What would you do?