My Best-cyber-Friend

    The internet has unlocked a new potential for how people interact.  Relationships can be maintained from thousands of miles away, and people who have never met before can speak to each other cleanly and clearly as if they were in each other's very living rooms.  But how and why is this mass communication possible?  Social networking, the internet, media, and all other sorts of contact between total strangers or the closest of friends has revolutionized how people build and develop relationships.
    For example, this past summer there was a Facebook group created for the entering Clemson freshman class.  The Clemson University Class of 2015 Facebook page, open to any and all entering freshmen.  It started from a humble beginning; people joined in slowly, trickling in at first.  I joined it at that stage when it was roughly 200 something members.  I've been able to watch this group explode from 200 members to over 2000 members now.  We have been able to make new friends from across the country, different nations even, so much that now we can run into someone randomly on campus and realize that we've already been friends online long before we've met in person.  Some of my best friends here at school, I "met" online before I met there in person.  Even now, this group of people has evolved to meet our changing environment.
   We began as a networking group, getting to know people who were deciding and finalizing Clemson as their school of choice.  Over time, it became a group asking who was from what state or country, what they wanted as their major.  Then it became a discussion on who was going to what orientation and what schedules people had constructed.  Overall, there was always that one guy who had the answer to every question possible (cough, Pierre, cough).  People networked, connected, built bridges in a cyber web that have lasted to even now.  This group has connected us in so many ways, I'm actually very grateful to have it because without it I wouldnt have some of the friends I have today.
    Society is a place that doesnt have to exist in the real world; the electronic one seems to suit many people just fine.  Things like Facebook have allowed us to communicate and get to know total strangers who have so much in common with each other.  After all, our best friends today live in our phones and computers as much as they do in their dorm rooms.