duolicious

a year after i pretty much lost all my irl friends at 15, i joined a harvest moon/rune factory roleplay group on tumblr and immediately made so many new friends, from all over the world. then i made my own tegami bachi rp and there, too, met some really wonderful girls. we would talk every day, write actual physical letters to each other, send gifts such as regional food of ours or plushies, sometimes even clothes, and one even gifted me the 100usd version of skyward sword which included a golden wiimote. unfortunately life happened and i lost contact with almost all of them, i only know where to locate two of them but i'm kinda nervous to do so... but anyway,

at 18 i made a steam account and started playing tf2, there i met two guys who to this day--almost 11 years later--remain my best friends, one in particular i legitimately couldn't imagine my life without. i also met so many other people i still talk to regularly, but what surprises me the most when i think about all this is

how easy it was

and i often look back and ask: how? how did i make such good friends so easily? friends that lasted for the most part an entire decade? and most importantly

why can't i do it now? what's changed? sometimes i play with really cool people online, we have lots of fun, banter, everything, we add each other and then poof, that's it, so what changed when it comes to communication? and ngl it was pretty frustrating, but i feel like i've finally broken that curse, or whatever it was

i originally made an account on duolicious just because my best friend had talked to me about it, and the premise was so silly that i wanted to see what kind of weirdos there were on it, though despite that i did try to take it seriously and make an actual proper profile

and.... it worked???

i basically have the entire site in my dms which is funny, there's so many people that it's actually pretty overwhelming, and some i haven't replied to in ages just because it's too mentally exhausting, but some others i feel i clicked with almost immediately and it's so nice, it's been literal years since i've made new friends, it's so refreshing!

i added most of my favorite people on discord, like my own little collection people equally weird as i am whom i could share stuff with; one i added simply because he was as obsessed with ror2 as i was, another because he liked mahjong, then another because he liked greek mythology (though this one ended up being quite a lot), another simply because he had the male version of my name, then another because he reads csm every tuesday with me, and so on, so on.

but despite starting off so "closed off", it's so nice to meet new people from zero, learn about them, their interests, being able to share stuff, with each chat we share more and more and it's honestly so wonderful. we start talking about that niche thing in common and it evolves into family, studies, struggles, you name it. one guy in particular was so excited about how much we had in common that he just blurted out that he wanted to meet irl but immediately backtracked "sorry yeah it's too early, i get it" lmaooo, though ngl i wouldn't mind meeting up in the future, but yeah it's too early now.

that's also what i would've told another.... acquaintance, if only he had told me he was coming here. did he genuinely forget or was he scared i was going to suggest meeting up? if that was the case then he simply had to say "hey, i'm going over there but i think it's too soon to meet up, still wanted to tell you tho" and i'd have been like "oh yeah no probs, i feel the same way actually, have fun and tell me about your concert later! hope it's good!" like friends do, but /////

removed everything i had written here lol, it was a bit too much

//// but anyways, that's not the point, i digressed a bit too much. the good thing is that for the first time in years i'm talking to a lot of new people from all walks of life, making a lot of new friends, sharing stories and perspectives and generally having a good time. this is exactly what i've wanted for so many years, to replicate what 16 and 18 y/o me had so easily done, and to think i got it all from a dumb ass silly little 4chan dating app lmao

i do kinda wish i could like, gather them all together and force everyone to be friends with each other or something so i could create one big friends group to play and stuff, but yeaaah that won't happen lol