How to do Online Friendships for Dummies
By Isha Pareek
The day before the new Monsoon semester was due to begin, my friend and I were on a video call, both of us loudly complaining about the online nature of the coming semester (for the umpteenth time), when she announced that she would call me five minutes before our classes started, every day. I was visibly confused, and asked her why. She blinked, and said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “So we can walk to class together!”
It’s been eight months since the campus officially went into lockdown. All of us were jolted out of the comfort of our (admittedly stressful) routine and forced into seclusion that none of us were prepared for. Academics had to be hastily moved to an online platform, with all of its shortcomings laid bare for students to face. We had to adjust to a home life that was not only unfavourable, but often hostile to any kind of learning, all while we grew increasingly conscious of the severity of the crisis we were going through. This sorry state of affairs was exacerbated by the physical absence of friends, who are for many (if not most) their primary support system. This is not to say that friends disappeared. Houseparty, Whatsapp, Zoom and other video calling and messaging apps rushed in as facilitators of social connection, and individualised hangout zones were carved out in the online space. Many of us have maintained our college friendships over long periods before, over summer breaks and semesters abroad, and some of us have managed to maintain friendships from school as well.
After eight weeks of isolation, it’s clear that friendships have become the grounds for the interplay between the strain of grating isolation, and the tiny, stubborn ways in which we still manage to love. There’s not much to talk about when you’re at home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and there are only so many times you can repeat the same anecdote or describe your pet’s diet before your friends stop picking up your calls. It’s also difficult to find ways of spending time with friends in newer, more creative ways — movies, skribbl.io, and other online games get monotonous after a while.
For me, however, Zoom birthdays are the most heart-warming representations of the efforts people put in to make birthdays special for each other in some way, even in the midst of a crisis of proportions as grand as this. Yes, I’ll admit that “Zoom fatigue” is an impediment as well; after several meetings and classes, hanging out with friends on the same platform can become tedious, almost chore-like and draining. Still, there is something charming about privately texting your friend while you both are in the middle of the same class, and seeing them smile discreetly on your screen as they see your text. Slow texters and indolent callers are teased but forgiven. Most people remain secure in their closest friendships, with their foundations set in comfort that had been attained before the lockdown, while newfound friendships or acquaintances, which are contingent on pleasant coincidences and accidents, have had to take a serious toll. All in all, the virtual space hasn’t been that bad. Our friendships have proven to be tenacious enough to thrive — serving as a safe space, as conversations persist, laughter still resounds and silences are inhabited side-by-side.
For others, the lockdown has been the stage for new friendships and the deepening of existing connections. Incoming first-years have had to accustom themselves to a system of online interaction that isn’t considered as fulfilling. The first semester is nerve-wracking, even without the added tension of having to navigate your social life online. Many of them are understandably disappointed, and skeptical of whether the real, lasting friendships which college promises can be created online at all. Others have managed to embrace the online format, half out of the enthusiasm first-years are known for, and half out of their acceptance of the fact that there is no feasible alternative. The state of uncertainty we live in has also reduced the amount of small talk we make; as our vulnerabilities surface and as we share our struggles with our peers, we grow warmer towards each other and build stronger bonds.
Still, for a lot of us, our friendships are premised on two things; our history, and (to a lesser degree) the promise of a future. Recounting memories of times spent together in the Before and talking about the prospect of campus opening (the After, if you like), was for the longest time the eventual destination of all online conversations (with a middle digression on COVID stats, updates on a vaccine etc). We are thinking of this quarantine phase as a minor blip, as if an (existential?) pause button had been pressed. This is just a moment, 1/16th of a second, except it has been extended into several months. There is just rising anticipation of the moment of reunion, of physicality and the prospect of the welcome company.
And so, when my friend told me that she would call me five minutes before class, sure, she was trying to recreate a mundane but significant aspect of our life in Ashoka in a virtual setting; but she was also paying homage to the beginnings of our friendship, to any friendship, that originates in closed rooms and open spaces, but which is realized in the corridors that connect these rooms and spaces, and the conversations that inhabit the time taken to cross them, with their million little inconsequential digressions.
