The Remarkable Lives of Internet Friends
The other night, I watched The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a documentary about a young Norwegian man, Mats Steen, born with a degenerative muscular disease that progressively limited his ability to participate in the world around him. After his death, Mats’s family discovered that he had spent thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) in which players create a character, go on adventures and fight monsters, and interact with other WoW players all over the world. As they explored the trove of messages and chat logs Mats’s character, Ibelin, had left behind, his family he had lived a rich interpersonal life within the game, filled with the kinds of relationships and experiences they thought his disease had denied him.
I knew the premise of Ibelin before I started watching it, and from that alone, I knew I would be in for an emotional time. While my life doesn’t exactly mirror Mat Steen’s story, the echoes are strong enough that it would be impossible not to identify with him in significant ways. I have played video games for most of my life, although I stick to the single-player variety; for me, games are an escape from the pressures and passions of a social life, rather than the surrogate conduit they were for Mats. I was recently diagnosed with cancer and have begun treatment for it. My prognosis carries a strong chance for recovery that Mats did not enjoy, but it has already limited my ability to live in and interact with the world around me. And where Mats found an online community through the guild he joined in World of Warcraft, I have found one through a Facebook group for the bad movie podcast The Flop House. (It makes about as much sense to my parents as Mats roleplaying as Ibelin made to his family.)
An additional element made my experience of watching Ibelin even more intense. Half an hour into starting the documentary, I learned that a longtime member of my online community, the Flop House Facebook group, had died from cancer. James had been in hospice care for several months, so while the news was not exactly a surprise, it still came as a shock. I took a break from Ibelin to read through other members’ memories and reactions, and to post my own. James was universally loved and liked in the group, a source of joy and optimism in the face of a terminal diagnosis, always ready with a kind word and an impassioned defense of Cats, the reviled 2019 adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, whose manic energy and bizarre creative choices became a source of comfort and levity to James throughout the last phase of his life.
As I read the lovely words everyone was sharing about James, the part of my brain I hate the most juddered into gear: You know they won’t say those nice things about you. They might act sad for a day or two, but what they’ll really feel is relief, because they finally won’t have to talk to you or see your dumb posts anymore.
Similar kinds of intrusive thoughts plagued Mats. Because he wanted his WoW friends to see him as a normal guy, he kept his condition secret from them, refusing to travel to a real life guild meet up, and even declining invitations so speak through voice chat. Although he kept his personal life hidden from them, his guild felt safe confiding in him; the documentary tells a beautiful story of Ibelin encouraging a mother to interact with her autistic son within the game after she expresses frustration over their inability to bond with one another. Ibelin’s advice works, and both mother and son credit him with their closer relationship, both in WoW and in their physical lives.
Stories like that, however, were not enough for Mats to overcome his feelings of isolation and hopelessness. On top of that, he develops a crush on a fellow guild member named Rumour, and even though she shares feelings for him, their potential relationship stalls out because Mats doesn’t want her to know he is disabled, and she interprets his shame as evasion. Eventually Rumour moves on, spending her time with other players, and Ibelin responds jealously, because of his inexperience in coping with social situations and relationships. All of which only reinforces his negative perception of himself and his place in the guild.
Members of the Flop House Facebook group have formed close friendships, traveled to meet one another in person, started their own podcasts together, and a few have even gotten married. I haven’t hit any of those interpersonal milestones, though. Most of my interactions with Flop House members are through posts in the group; I’m Facebook friends with well over a hundred members, but I rarely write on their walls or send them direct messages. And for the most part, I’m content with this level of intimacy. Deeper connections have always mystified me, on one level or another, so having constellations of friends where I can shares news, memes, and jokes without the expectation for us to go deeper works for me.
As long as I keep my focus on what I want from these friendships, I’m fine; problems can creep in, though, when I listen to the voices insisting what I think I want is not actually what I need, and that I shouldn’t trust my own emotions, because they don’t match up with most people’s. Sometimes it’s hard to believe my Flop House friends are respecting my boundaries—or that online friendships are simply a more casual category for them—and not keeping me at a deliberate distance so my inveterate awkwardness can’t infect their good times.
If you imagine your social life as a series of concentric circles, most people have several well-populated levels inside the “people you only know from the internet” circle. For me, though, my parents are pretty much the only people in my closer circles, especially now that I’m living with them while I go through chemotherapy. I literally don’t have the energy for anyone else these days—not that I sought out friends when I had the social resources, either. From that angle, my disease has simplified my social life in a way I kind of welcome, because now no one has to ask why I don’t get out more.
At the end of The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, members of Ibelin’s guild gather in World of Warcraft to hold a memorial service for their departed friend. During the darkest days of the COVID pandemic, The Flop House group lost a beloved member, and because they could not get together in person, her best online friends hosted a celebration of her life in Animal Crossong: New Horizons. That game was a social lifeline for many Flop House members, with a few of them even buying a Nintendo Switch and the game so they could visit their friends’ islands. I’ve never had any interest in Animal Crossong; as I mentioned earlier, video games are an escape from social responsibilities for me, not an avenue to enhance them.
When we knew James was gone, several Flop House members started organizing a memorial group watch of Cats. He would have loved that, and as long as I have the energy to sit in in front of my computer and type silly jokes about a delightfully deranged movie, I’ll join in with them. That’s the kind of community I need.