Editor’s note: Sorry for not posting last week. I was in Greece! I will write about my travels next week as I am currently too tired and the emotional scarring from (not) sleeping on airport floors is still too fresh. For now, please enjoy this little post about friends.
I didn’t really have a good group of friends for a long time. I had “friends” that I would hang out with once in a while, but no friends that would take the initiative to make plans with me. It took me until more recently than I care to admit to realize that this was not a healthy friendship. Why waste energy on people who don’t care enough to waste any on you, right?
This is where Tumblr comes in. People who don’t use Tumblr think Tumblr is really weird. Full of fan fiction, inexplicable memes, and straight-up porn, it’s tailored to a very specific demographic. It isn’t necessarily a form of social media, rather a form of microblogging, yet somehow I’ve managed to meet three of my closest friends through my dashboard.
I spent a while trying to force “natural” ways to make friends, but I realized that it wasn’t really any better than what I was already dealing with: trying to get people who don’t want to hang out with me to hang out with me. One day, I just stopped trying, and the next day, one of my now-best friends fell right into my lap, tagging me in a text post, telling her followers to pray for me because I’d reached my daily post limit on the site. Over a year later, I approached a photographer I’d been following for a while about shooting a wedding for a friend, and she said yes. I met her at the wedding and she quickly became one of my best friends too. Shortly after, I met her boyfriend, and he rounded out the group of my three best friends, all of whom started out as nothing more than mutual Tumblr followers.
xx Gabi
Owl in London 
I’ve always made the best friends through shared experiences. To me that was always something like classes, a sports team, or social events, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a friend entirely over the interment. It’s interesting that for the four of you Tumblr was strong enough of a shared experience that it yielded such a deep friendship. Its good to hear you found people worth spending time with.
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Funny that you say people who don’t use Tumblr think it’s weird, because I use Tumblr and think it’s weird. Or misundertood, wither way Tumblr is in a realm of it own. Its so cool that you were able to form relationships with people with similar interests on Tumblr. I’ve never been able to do that but i’m sure it is cool already knowing things about people without actually having to meet them. I guess it cuts out half of the process making it much easier. It is also awesome that you met your two best friends out of nowhere. I know this sounds totally cliche, but when we stop looking o hard for things, they tend to fall right into our laps. That’s how life works, I guess. Anyway, really enjoyed reading this post! 🙂
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I can relate to your post, Gabi, as I met two close girlfriends via a Hiking MeetUp in Philadelphia when I was training for the Inca Trail hike to Macchu Picchu.
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