Where To Make Friends
Part Two
By George Rusky

How To Make Friends On The Internet?

Yesterday I wrote of making friends for middle-aged folks who had found themselves living in a new country, new city, in short, far from their birth nest.

Having traveled through a number of places for finding potential friends, I have peacefully arrived at the Internet.

Now, after having spent five years on Line I may say that all Internet visitors are roughly divided onto two categories: those who show their faces names and addresses and the bigger part –who don’t do either of above mentioned.
They even don’t have names, just codes.

To make friends at forums and newsgroups is real, provided you follow the rules. Some of them are:
1. Joint a discussion group, a forum or a newsletter.
2. There, in most of them you’ll be asked to tell about yourself. Do it.
3. Read carefully your fellow – writers’ mails.
4. Discover the writers working in the same or similar areas and contact them.
A tip: the character of their reply will display a lot. If you get a polite respond, bordering with the answer of auto responder, most probably this person just tries to be polite.
5. Consider important if your new correspondent uses her Christian name or a nickname, weather communicates openly or strives to avoid naming herself.
6. Try to guess on the tone of a message weather the author is a man or a woman. The English tongue is sexless, so use your intuition, chiefly if you want to meet with a man-writer. A scarce, though.
7. Develop your relations unhurriedly, stay away from bombarding your new acquaintance with more than one mail at a time.
8. Tell about yourself only when asked. Show your likes and dislikes cautiously.
9. Avoid criticizing your friend’s stories when asked. Forestall this kind invitation saying that critiques are something you have never been good at.
10.Answer personal questions shortly, spare the details. Respect you new friend"s time and patience.
11. Try to know something about your correspondent. Ask only about something directly connected to the subject of her writings or trade.
12. Analyze the development of contacts, experiment with new subjects of your on-line friend’s possible interests. If you feel, that your relations do not have a tendency for progress, it might be wise to eliminate them and see how they will go.
13. The word of warning, if I may. Never use one text of message for a bunch of folks. You will most probably lose them all!

Well, I could have continued with the list of dos and don’ts, but try to find your own way in it.

Instead of Resume.

From my personal experience, I must confess that the Internet has been quite merciful to me, sending interesting, full of positive emotions people.

With them we exchange regularly e-mails, usual letters with photos and souvenirs. One German guy with his family even came to me in Prague last year.

Keeping and developing good relations on the Internet demands your time, the most valuable we all have.

Invest yourself in your invisible Internet friendship and your life will always be full of joy and gladness.