NYC Street Diaries: The Positive Side of the Internet + Friendships

I've decided to nix whatever beauty post I was going to write today to talk about and show a few things. It's been a while since I've claimed something as a street diaries post, which is just a fancy way of me wanting to use iPhone photos and keep it casual without admitting defeat and chalking it up to laziness. I'm actually pre-writing this, so how lazy can I be if I'm not choosing to write this post the day that it's supposed to go up, huh?

The internet is kind of a weird place. I used to have to spend a lot of time on Instagram for my previous position at my company and my screentime has gone down exponentially since transitioning to a new time, which to me is a good thing. I don't think social media has personally ruined my life, but the internet is a controversial place full of controversial things and controversial people and take a shot the next time I say controversial. I get it. I see it. There's a lot (emphasis on a lot) of garbage on the internet, and this isn't even a self-deprecating "I'm trash" joke. But there's also pockets of the internet and curated communities where you can enjoy the pros of the internet without reading 200 comments deep on a YouTube video and questioning why people choose to use their words to spread hate, or in most cases, just absolute nonsense they pass off as their "free speech" and "opinions."

I'm really not here to hate on the internet though. In fact, this is a celebration of one of my favorite things about the internet: the vast majority of people who utilize it, especially through social media. I used to only use social media for personal purposes. Even when I first started this blog, I didn't really link out to my Twitter or Instagram on here. I had a few people I followed on Tumblr and regularly talked to (hi Mahi!), but other than that, my life was kind of siloed to the point where "internet friends" weren't really a thing in my life.

I kind of went from 0 to 100 when it came to making friends online. At some point in 2014, I think I changed my tune and was more active on Tumblr and joined blogging networks and wanted to embrace my online identity, which really, is just my IRL identity. From this, friendships flourished via DM, text, any possible digital media to facilitate a friendship through the airwaves when I couldn't just call them up and have them over for pizza or go out to get coffee.

I'm fortunate that I found some online communities where I felt accepted and found camaraderie through similar interests (boybands, blogging, the usual millennial female thing). This was especially important during a time where my IRL friendships were deteriorating or would end when I w t naturally drift away. I'm also fortunate now to live in a city where some of those online friendships were able to transition offline.

Since I'm burying the lead, as per usual, I met an online friend. Finally. After four years.

I'm sure I'm speaking to the choir when I talk about the struggles of having friendships that stem from the internet because hello, welcome to the world of content creation and using the internet as your creative medium. So I think most of know the glorious feeling of being united at last. I mean, I would akin it to reuniting with a friend after a long time apart except you've never gotten to like, hug each other and experience their existence in their IRL glory.

Hannah from The Cleansed Review is a gem of a human and used her purposeful layover in NYC to leave the airport, come to my apartment, do my eye makeup (which I've been dying for her to do since we became friends), and popped into Chinatown, Soho, and Nolita with me so she could see a little bit of the city before she set off to London. As I joked on Instagram, get you a friend that takes four hours out of her layout and round trip to the airport via Lyft to see you *Joe Jonas voice* for the first time (that song still slaps, I don't care how the Jonas Brothers feel about it).

I don't really have the word to describe this joyous occasion, so all I have to say is, god bless the internet sometimes. What a wonderful friendship facilitator!