There is a tendency of many people to treat internet interactions as if they are somehow inherently fake.
Many people express a strong preference for in person interactions over texting or calls. I can understand where this comes from — in person interaction is a much more rich source of informational bandwidth, due to the presence of body language, tone of voice, and the option to incorporate physical touch.
However, many people then assume that due to the restricted flow of information, it is not possible to carry on e.g. meaningful romantic relationships online, dismiss "internet friends" as shallow, and treat people who engage in online relationships preferentially as lacking in core skills to succeed in in-person relationships. This seems to be particularly common among individuals who are not very online, or, contrarily, among people who use platforms such as Facebook or Twitter (now X) which are known for the deleterious effects they have on social interaction.
I wish to present my own life and the lives of several people close to me as case studies of the degree to which this is correct (online relationships being casual, fake, or a form of palliative or band-aid on a sustained problem) and the degree to which this is not correct (that online relationships can be deep, intimate, or even lifesaving in their effects, providing vital cures rather than mere palliatives.)
I am a 30-something trans woman, and am bisexual. I have been part of many online communities over the years, ranging from guilds in MMOs to hookup scenes to science-fiction forums to rationalist writing groups to spiritualist cults. I am polyamorous and at present have four girlfriends, all of whom are some flavour of transgender.
Let us present some case studies:
I have been in several of these over my life and they generally take the same broad structure. There is a guild leader who is quite devoted to whatever MMO is being played; below them is a small cadre of perhaps a half dozen guild officers; below them are about twenty or so active players at the outside, whom you may see in chat. Communications in such guilds are defined by their space and time; everyone is here to play the game, and while people may come to know their guildmates as friends, romance is rarer. People tend to be mildly in character - not as, particularly, a character in the fiction of the world, but in character as the kind of person they'd like to be or want to be. Contact is usually quite casual, but romance between guildmates is not unheard of — though it is more common that guildmates who are in a relationship were already dating before they joined the game, I've encountered at least a couple in-game romances.
Generally a guild gathers for dungeons, these being the accepted social activity in MMOs, but casual chat in the guild chat channel is also common and social events to hang out may happen from time to time to celebrate in-game achievements, seasonal festivals, or simply as time together.
In general, the problems that get in the way of deep interaction here are that
In other words, it is very much like a hobby club of strangers you do not know well; while friendships can come about over many days playing the same game together, the lack of private spaces and the assumption that people are not here for dating or deep connections makes forming connections more difficult.
However, in almost every guild I have joined, there is a core group of players who are dedicated to the game, play together, and know each other quite well. I have been in such a group myself in the past, and still remember some of the people from it fondly, though their character names have slipped my mind in the decade since I last played a MMO dedicatedly.
In short, this kind of environment is best for developing friendships of long acquaintance through a shared hobby.
Online sex-roleplay spaces are generally two things:
These spaces are entirely dedicated to having online sex, where by online sex we mean "writing porn together, each as their own character. The characters take turns doing actions to each other, freeform role-play style, often while their writers are masturbating simultaneously."
Generally there is some degree of plausible deniability as to whether one is actually masturbating at the keyboard in these spaces; the appropriate question after a roleplayed scene is "did you enjoy yourself", never "did you have an orgasm." The reality of physical bodies is inimical to the fantasy aspect of the play, and sharing contact information is generally considered a bad idea because a person is not their character.
As such, the dominant form of longer-term relationship in such spaces is an in-character one, based on whatever excuse in the fiction has been fabricated for the two characters to repeatedly bone, and the actual relationship is "play partners", as one might have with someone that one meets in a kink space without knowing them in their personal life.
However, it is still possible in some cases for individuals to form ongoing intimate relationships in this environment as well, dating someone in truth as well as in character. I have had such relationships twice, and only regretted it in one of those two cases. The other I still look back on fondly to this day, appreciating everything that partner taught me as a mentor and a lover. I maintained said relationship for some time even after I left the platform in question, and while we ultimately drifted apart, I don't consider this to have been inevitable, even despite the fact that each of us was in character at the time.
In other words: meeting people in such an environment is not unlike meeting someone on e.g. tinder or at a bar or kink club. The focus is on sexuality rather than the longer term relationship, but sometimes sparks can catch and kindle a deeper relationship.
This group is involved in writing fiction, primarily speculative fiction. The members of the group are sorted for similar life philosophy, being a rationalist meetup, and for similar taste in hobbies, being a writing group. Additionally, erotica stories are welcomed by the community.
This environment is where I found four of my current girlfriends, whom I have been dating for almost six years now in the longest case. All of us met through our involvement in the rationalist community in one way or another, having shared a discord server at some point in our history. All of us are interested in writing fiction, and all of us have written fiction together collaboratively.
From day to day, we reside in a private XMPP server where we chat, share things from our days, play online video games, talk over voice, and, yes, have sex, generally either as phone sex when no-one is around to overhear us or, more often, as text-based roleplays. Having experienced in-person sex as well during visits with my international partners, I can say that the experience is comparable.
Naturally, some things are lost. In particular we all tend to wish we could give physical hugs to our partners in many situations, so many of us have plushies sent by our partners to act as stand-ins to hug since we can't be there ourselves. Physical touch of the comforting form is lacking. However, spending time in online games together (particularly minecraft and other survival crafting games where one can build their own house) gives a real sense of a shared home and space, letting us get some of the nutrients of inhabiting places together despite being far apart.
As to the depth of the relationships, two of my girlfriends are presently living together, most of the rest of us are planning to move in with them as soon as we can manage it, and most of us had a major life problem (selecting from the cheery list of psychosis, depression, spiritual abuse, near-homelessness, and/or abusive family) that the emotional, financial or legal assistance of the rest of the polycule has meaningfully resolved to a much better state. These were not small problems. For many of us they took years of patient care and attention to resolve, often with crises along the way that occupied all our resources at the time. Nonetheless, we are presently all much better off than we started, and this fact is largely due to the combined efforts of everyone in the polycule pulling together.
I also maintain several long-standing friendships in this community, though I feel I need to belabor their depth less.
In most of these locations, any relationships you have are due to shared interest in the same kind of content — commenters on the same story, followers of the same aesthetic style of posting, or similar. You are in the position of two people seeing the same painting at an art gallery. Interaction does occur, but tends to be casual rather than intimate due to taking place in public. DM’d content may be more directed and topical, generally a natural extension of two people noticing each other in their orbits, but the assumption of public faces is standard.
In these locations people tend to be freer to be their authentic selves than in person, but still have a measure of reserve due to interacting with strangers. Deep conversations can still come from happenstance meetings, however. This form of interaction is how I met my wife, whom I have now been dating continuously for eight years under similar circumstances to my more recent girlfriends.
While it is a social convention that people in your physical presence come first, this is merely conventional and not necessary to a relationship. Internet interactions can and do lead to deep relationships that are emotionally and sexually intimate, as well as deeply committed. However, because of the assumption that physical life comes first, it can be difficult to find a genuinely intimate relationship - but, I will note, the base rates of genuinely intimate relationships in other areas of life are also relatively low. People are strangers by default, and need a reason to connect to reach a state of intimacy.
I would encourage those who read this to reach out more often, both online and in person. Rejection can sting, but it’s ultimately a small up-front price to pay to eliminate someone from your search for friends or partners. Risking a little offering of trust is often a good way to get engagement back.