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Fill-in/ersatz friends: Are they no longer necessary because of online communication?
For those people who are not loners, the absence of one's friend's coupled with the need for company and conversation - natural objectives - has led to conversations and time spent with family, flatmates, work colleagues, course, colleagues, neighbours, etc.
The availability of online communication to converse with both current friends when they are elsewhere and also unmet friends with whom one has common interests and attitudes has dimished the necessity to communicate with others except to be polite or to discuss what has to be discussed, for example work-related issues.
Is this good or bad? Is the avialability of friends at all times - clearly a good thing, especially as they can be switched off at any time - helpful or unhelpful towards relationships with the other people? Is it good to be able to ignore the "boring" people, or is it bad that one is less likely to be forced to get to know someone with a different outlook, different politics, different age, different background, etc? Is it good that one's conversations with the "others" need not develop and so the politeness and good hunour is retained?
Does having access to your favourite people almost all of the day make you a loner in the rest of the world?