I am an only child. When people ask me if I ever minded not having siblings, my usual answer is, “You don’t miss what you never had.” It just never really entered my consciousness.

When I first arrived in the United States, I only knew one person. That person was my long-distance boyfriend at the time, who lived in New Orleans while I was in Pullman, Washington. All the time I was in Pullman, I would attend classes, go to the cafeteria, the library, and so forth, but I would never really indulge in extracurricular activities. I did go out a few times, but I always felt the social interaction was forced, and I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t get along with people. So I stayed alone in my dorm room most of the time. Which was fine, because I’m used to it, and the Internet has this great way of making you not feel alone.

Then I transferred to San Francisco, because I fell in love with the City. In San Francisco, I only knew two people, who were mutual friends of the boyfriend and I at the time. I think I probably only saw them about ten times the whole time I lived here. We didn’t live near each other, and again, I think we only got along on a rather superficial level. I’m also a pretty quiet person, so that made it difficult for people to really get to know me.

All throughout my years in college, I didn’t really have friends. My only real social interaction was with classmates, and the socializing sort of ended once class was over. I attended a commuter school, so most of the students have very busy lives outside of college, whereas my whole life WAS college. And again, I just enjoyed being alone and being on the Internet, where I didn’t feel so lonely. I would get depressed every once in awhile with the lack of people to talk to, but once the crying stopped, I would just watch some TV and feel better.

I make it sound like I was horribly sad the whole time, but I wasn’t. Sure I was sad occasionally. But being an only child, I’m really used to being by myself. I liked shopping by myself, I liked watching movies by myself, I liked dining by myself, etc. It was just so natural for me to be alone. It felt comfortable. Boring, but comfortable.

Which, ironically, was also my Achilles heel. At the same time, I really wanted some actual real-life friends. But because I was so used to being quiet, to being by myself, to being alone, that I was too scared to step outside my comfort zone. More than that, I was completely socially inept. I didn’t know how to make small talk, I didn’t know what to say to people, I didn’t know how to interrupt a conversation. And if you’ve actually met me in real life, you’d know that I STILL don’t at times.

Honestly, the one thing that made the whole thing turn around, was once again, the Internet. When blogging suddenly became huge, and blogging “meet ups” started to happen, I began to meet like-minded people in person. I was still quiet, shy, and withdrawn, but more people were willing to talk to me, because they knew I was there for the same thing. And the more people talked to me, the more I would talk back. And the more that happened, the more I would open up. And the more that happened, the more I would interact with people. It just grew from there.

(Examples of events where I met many of my now-friends: The SF Bay Blogger Meetup, the SF Metroblogging meetups, the couple of Movable Type Meetups, BloggerCon(s), WordPress meetups)

So, the Web was incredibly instrumental in me opening up my social circle. This is why I embraced social networking opportunities when they first entered the scene — not because they were some way for me to make money or whatever, but because this was one of the only ways I knew how to meet people (I don’t go to bars, I don’t go to clubs, etc. there are very few avenues for me to meet people). It worked great for awhile, especially when only a few people were into the whole blogging scene. The quality of people was high — like-minded geeks who were into the same things I was? What’s not to like?

Then, somehow, it got weird.

Exhibit A: Dodgeball. Dodgeball was this mobile social networking service that lets you text your location to friends, and vice versa. The idea was that folks would meet up spontaneously if you were around the same neighborhood. Which actually worked out great for me for awhile. I would be like “Oh, so-and-so is in Cafe Du Nord. I should stop by.” And then I would, and he would be happy to see me, and we would talk for a bit. Or it would be like “Oh, it looks like 5 of my friends are at House of Shields. I should stop by to see what’s up.” And then I would show up, and it was the same thing. For someone who barely had even ten friends most of her life, this was EXHILARATING. I am not usually a spontaneous person, and Dodgeball pretty much forced me to be spontaneous. It was seriously a high.

But like with all drugs, it turns out it wasn’t always so good for you. At one point, Dodgeball was so widely implemented that it became ridiculous to even use it. My friend Jesse gave an example, of when all your friends would show up at the same place and check in, letting all your friends who are ALREADY AT THE PARTY know that you arrived. At one point pretty much everyone in my Dodgeball friends list was at the party, and I STILL sent a check-in message for no real reason. The signal-to-noise ratio was slowly becoming apparent.

It started getting really bad when people would use Dodgeball in a really meaningless way that had nothing to do with socializing. “I’m at the Safeway!” (You want people to meet you at the grocery store?) or “I’m at an invite-only party!” (Thanks for letting us uninvited people know), etc. Then Twitter came along, where all of that meaningless chatter finally had a place. Around the same time, the social networking scene started to gain real mainstream momentum, with MySpace at its peak and actual panels at SxSW on how to make money with all this Web 2.0 stuff. Dot-com 2.0 was back, in a big way.

It was around then that everything to do with online social networks started to lose its luster, and this was during the pre-Facebook era. What were valuable social enablers to me, suddenly became tarnished with VC dollars and stock market glitz. Every single discussion around blogs had to do with monetizing. “Business blogging” became a big thing. Personal blogs started to fade away into obscurity, and LiveJournal struggled to stay alive in a world that didn’t take them seriously. If you did have a personal blog, it was mostly about self-promotion, with very little personal voice. Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it still makes me sad that when the majority of mainstream America think of a blog today, they think of Perez Hilton. ‘Nuff said.

At the same time, it turns out that some of my “friends” weren’t really that. Some of them turned out to be fair weather friends, and that I was imagining them to be closer than they were. Others, I just never really connected with on any real level. This made me really upset for awhile, but I got over it eventually — I can’t be friends with everyone, after all.

And so, because I saw this turn, I started to wean myself off these constant-on social networks, opting for closer more meaningful connections in everyday life. I’m only on Facebook now because everyone else is on it and they all seem to use it to announce events (Have I mentioned I missed TWO birthday parties because I didn’t pay attention to Facebook? I’m STILL mad about it). I’m on Twitter more for meaningless chatter than anything else. Plurk is slightly more community-oriented, but my friends hardly use it, so it’s more of a fan vehicle.

Problem was, I gained friends by participating in social networks. Now that I’m no longer really fully partaking in them, I almost never meet new people. I email the friends I do have, and I occasionally ask them out for drinks or something, but that’s about it. I don’t really get invited to dinners or movies or games. It’s really not a big deal, because most of the time, I can’t make it anyway due to work or just wanting to stay home.

But it still makes me sad occasionally. Just like all those years ago. I guess things never really do change.