When I was younger I always had a really hard time opening up to people, any friends I do still have from those days are only because they spoke to me first. I have social anxiety and extremely shy, at least in real life. I can be super friendly thanks to having to be because of the jobs I have had (I'll give you the best customer service you've ever had!). Even though I have a handful of friends in real life, I hardly ever hung out with them- even if I wanted to (you know, one of those things where you want to go out but then you don't want to kind of things...or maybe it's just me). So it was extremely hard to upkeep the friendships I have. Sometimes I go months without actually calling or texting a friend, not because I don't want to but because I have nothing to talk about. When all you do is work, school, and play ACNL/video games and most of your real life friends are females who either have children, getting married, don't play games, etc it limits what you can actually talk about.
The main differences between having a friend in person versus an online friend is that you can't really say "Hey! Let's go out and eat" kind of thing. Well, if the online friend is really amazing, you could each go to the same place in your town and then snapchat/skype/video call each other haha. It's just being able to physically hang out that separates the two for me (not that I hang out anyways but you know, it's nice to have options). Even if you do have a friend in real life, they can lie to you, be unreal with who they are with you. etc and the same goes with those online. It's just easier for those online because they're talking through a screen on your desk or laptop vs seeing them face to face.
I seem to trust both sets quite the same. I've been let down by real life and online friends and I'm pretty sure I've let some down as well. I seem to do better with online friends, mostly because they don't expect you to hang out or call them up like real life friends do. I can totally go a month or two and hit up an online friend and we pick up as if those two months never passed. I have one online friend who I regularly talk to and he's quite frankly one of the few people who isn't related to me that I can call best friend (he doesn't know that though lmao). We've been online friends since 2008 and we've always been there (in spirit haha) for each other when things get rough and when we want to complain about life. I suppose it helps that he shares similar interests and I see him like family. We're always planning to high tail it to Japan and marry ourselves some Japanese waifus but you know, flying to Hawaii and then Japan is $$$ haha. Maybe in a few years, we'll actually make that happen (hoping anyways).
It's tricky to find people who are worth your time and who make you a part of their life, not just someone they use when they have nothing else better to do (like that relationship saying going along the lines of you need to find someone who makes you a priority in life, not an option kind of thing and that should be true with friendships). But when you do find them, in real life or online, you should try to maintain that friendship.
Unless you're a hermit like me who just plays games, works, and buys things for her cat because her cat "needs" them. Then you don't really need friends. Just bread. And
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