At the Pirate Bay trial in 2009, Peter Sunde was questioned about how he met his co-founders. He answered, “I don’t remember, but I assume it was a chatroom on the internet.” The prosecutor paid little attention to that response, and instead went on to ask “when was the first time you met IRL?” Before answering, Peter clarifies that they “don’t use the expression IRL. We say AFK. But that’s another issue. I don’t remember that either.” The judge becomes confused at the internet jargon and asks what IRL means, with the prosecutor defining it as “in real life.” But Peter adds: “We don’t like that expression. We use AFK, away from keyboard. We think that the internet is for real.”

That scene has always stuck with me: that the prosecutor discards the fact that they met online and immediately jumps to asking when they met in person. As if their online interactions weren’t valid, or maybe, as valid. The fact that Peter feels so strongly about the internet being viewed as real that he becomes nit-picky about jargon.

But this was in 2009, a world when online dating was still taboo and Tinder dates weren’t a thing. We’ve evolved since then as a society, but we still refer to the people we interact with on a daily basis as “internet friends.”

Yesterday I learned the sad news that my friend James Golick had died. I met James on Twitter, so I suppose it‘s tragically fitting that I found out about his death on Twitter. It’s been surreal, watching the tweets come streaming in, and the memories that come along with them. One thing I can’t shake, though, is that so many people feel the need to mention that “they never met him” but he’d still impacted their life, or that they “wish they could have met in real life.”

But what makes an “internet friend” a different class than an “in real life” friend? Sure, I have friends that I see every few weeks in person, but I also have “internet friends” I see every few months — yet they interact with me every single day; through a tweet, a fave, a Snapchat, a comment on my selfie on Instagram, and so on. “Internet friends” who follow me on Twitter probably know me better than most of my “IRL friends.” In times of tragedy like this, you don’t have your physical group of friends around to meet up in a bar and exchange funny stories. Instead, you have the Internet, and you exchange memories with strangers.

James was my friend, and I am going to miss him. We “only met once,” but to me that doesn’t change anything, it just enabled me to take a selfie with him. He was snarky, and always called me out on my shit. He loved jazz, and cocktails, and helping others. He was ironically fascinated by my love of selfies and every time he saw something selfie-related he would send it my way. The internet is full of his accolades right now, and he will be missed by so many. His death has shown me that there shouldn’t be a distinction between internet friends and IRL friends, because the internet is real. The words we exchange are real, the friendships we develop are real, and the grief we experience when we lose them is real.

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