Are Blog Friendships Phony?

I came across an interesting post (via Patrix's desipundit) that categorized the visitors to blogs. Most bloggers would probably agree that the only visitors that really count are the banterers and the loyalists: the ones who come by often, leave comments, and maybe post links on their own blogs (if they have them). Although it might be nice to have thousands of visitors a day (which obviously I don’t), if none of them ever commented, or e-mailed, or linked, it would be difficult to believe that your blog made any difference to anyone.

Suppose A, B, C, and D all have blogs and they all read each other’s blogs daily. They comment frequently on each other’s blogs. They frequently link to each other’s blogs. If they all lived in the same city, they might meet and chat and be the best of friends. But A, B, C, and D live in different cities, and will probably never meet. If they never meet, does that mean that they really aren’t friends, they’re just strangers?

My wife (who doesn’t blog and views my blog with contempt) is convinced that “blog friends” are merely strangers, and she cannot see why I would waste precious time writing for strangers. She has a point: if you have never meet someone, then they would be strangers of a sort. But they’re strangers you know a lot about, and they seem nice and interesting and you might form some empathy toward them as if they were your “real” friends. I don’t doubt if D above were to announce that he was getting married or his wife just had a new baby, A, B, and C would be a bit excited about it.

I started this blog as a means for me to write about ideas I had. When I was at the U of Minnesota, I would frequently chat with my classmates about various subjects. It was fun to just to share ideas with peers who could understand my way of thinking. After leaving grad school, I found that my mind was atrophying into mush. I thought that maybe writing about my ideas would force me to keep thinking and to improve the quality of thought and the quality of my writing in general. But, I found that what keeps me blogging more than anything is the fact that there are a few people who read my blog and comment on it.

I remember writing to Amit Varma about what he considered to be the benefit to him from being the great blogger of India. He told me that meeting fellow bloggers at the blog meets meant a lot to him because he is somewhat shy and wouldn’t meet that many people otherwise. It is funny that every picture of him has his face blocked by someone else because he always stands in the background.

It was very nice last week when I got to meet famous bloggers Alex Tabarrok and Bryan Caplan. But such meetings are really rare (they’re the only people I ever met through blogging). I think that blogging is an excellent way of finding people who share your interests and views, but these people might be living on the other side of the world and probably not in your city.

So let me ask you: if you were D and C came to your city, would you be interested in meeting him in person? Why or why not, please comment.