Internet Friends

You're pretty sure this isn't how you're supposed to make friends. You're supposed to meet your friends in elementary school sitting on the playground and bond over the fact you both like the color orange. You're supposed to meet your friends in class on the first day of middle school and sit with them at lunch throughout all the years at that school only to go to the same school as them in high school because you value their friendship over your education. You're supposed to meet your friends doing a group project in university a month into the year because you'd never really bothered to talk to anyone yet.

(But you've never really had friends, just watching from afar and wishing you had someone to laugh with, too.)

You're not supposed to meet your friends on Tumblr.com at three am because you'd rather be reading through shitposts than sleeping, but that's normal because this is college and you're allowed to make stupid mistakes. So you do.

The first time you notice the URL, you don't think anything of it. It's just a random, faceless person who reblogged one of your rants about the stress of school. It's meaningless to you; just another notification on a website you don't care about besides the fact that it supplies you with memes.

The next time you notice the URL it's because the person behind the keyboard has again reblogged one of your rants, this time about the dangers of smoking as a teenager and why you regret doing it. (Smoking was another mistake, but you're young so you can make as many as you want.) This time, though, there's a message to add to it; some words to go along to the URL.

This is why I've never smoked. I hope you're doing okay. :)

You smile faintly and keep scrolling. It doesn't mean anything to you anyway.

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It goes on like that for a while until you notice it's the same URL. You furrow your eyebrows because no one ever comes back more than a few times and certainly never this consistently. You wonder why this person keeps reblogging your posts, why they keep commenting, why they seem to care even though you don't.

You frown and give up, muttering about creeps online before switching over to another website.

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It keeps happening and the questions keep building inside your brain until you become paranoid and glare at the screen every time the URL reblogs something of yours. At this point you don't care anymore it they're a perfectly nice person, you're just mad.

You decide to take some action against this.

On a Saturday afternoon in the University Library when you're really supposed to be doing school work, you send this URL a message.

3:30pm     Stop liking my posts.

You shut down tumblr and get started on that essay you really should've started yesterday.

The next day when you check tumblr, as you do everyday, there's a new message in the inbox. You click it.

2:46am     You know, given all the nice and intelligent posts, I was expecting you to be a little more polite. ;)

You growl softly and punch out a reply to this URL who is clearly not in a right state of mind.

1:12pm      I can be polite.

The reply comes fast and there's something about it that sounds like a challenge.

1:13pm     So why aren't you?

You don't know how to answer that, so you close the tab and distract yourself with pokemon trivia.

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