Real life friends, imo. However, online friends can be just as awesome, in fact, I met one of my best friends online. He moved to Sydney (Over 1000km away) last year... Real life friends you can go to their house and visa versa. You can interact a lot better, with emotion, physical gestures to help carry a point, sarcasm (Very important to me, I'm a very sarcastic person in real life), and parties. ------, if I didn't go to parties every month or so, I'd a splode. Although, with real life 'friends' for people like me (Not too physically attractive, and strange... And nerdy) they can turn out to be arseholes just pretending to be your friend to make you look like a ------ing gullible idiot. But that can depend on who you are, and what you're like. Online friends there is very little emotion, and almost all emotion is from a predefined set of pixels called "emoticons" You can visit their 'place' without hacking and there is no physical gestures. And you can't get drunk with them and walk around the mall at 2am. Although, with online friends they are a lot less likely to judge you and if they don't like you, they don't like you, that's the end of it. I have a tight group of really good friends, that I'd consider brothers as well as best friends. I also have a not so tight but larger group of friends who are more popular than me by leaps and bounds that have helped me get action on multiple occasions.
both, its nice to meet people across the world u cant do that unless u got a nice pot of cash to go visit USA and such. shame coz alot of onliners are cool yet RL friends u can interact and generally create a human friendship when its based on all social outcasts and rights/wrongs we have now as a civilisation where as online hell who cares what he's like to his own RL friends, he pwns at CS.
for me real friends are better than online friends (even though I have more online friends) they will be there in flesh, whenever youre down, you can always have some fun and go places, unlike the other where you can only confide to them online
I mean I have some internet friends, i talk to and have a few loughes, but thats nothing like, for example... Going out with ma friends for a lil drink and talk about all the BS we did..... i mean, its more fun and you.. I dont know, real is better.
Real life friends are much better. They help you prepare for the real world of association and conversation by interacting. Over the interent, you can hide behind your keyboard and never have to face reality.
I think both relationships can work... but online relationships can become really unreal and can really change when you meet this online entity in person.
I have more online friends than real friends but online friends are kinda hollow, you dont get the actual in the flesh bonus of being able to interact with them irl. I like online gaming and all, but nothing beats have a few cold brews with my mates up the pub discussing work, girls, and cars...
Real friends. I mean, what's the point in online friends? Chances are, you'll never meet them. I mean, what can you do with a online friend? Go to a virtual bar? haha
For me, it's got to be real life friends. I can't explain exactly why... So i'll go with this: [insert long, deep, thought out paragraph about friends here.]
I would say apples and oranges. The forms of communication are differant. I believe that online friendship is very serious just as real life friendship can be. It just depends on how you tap in to, not all people dip into their online friendship as much as they can. Online it is easier to fully take advantage of friendships.