She’s the dear friend I’ve never met. Is she about to drain my savings?

One of my closest friends is a complete stranger. It’s not that she’s recently done something wildly out of character, or even that some harrowing secret has just surfaced and permanently altered my perception of her. I mean it in the truest sense: although I talk to her every day, I know practically nothing about her. We have never even met. We probably never will.

It’s strange, but not as strange as it sounds. I asked a couple of my group chats about it, and most of us have, or have had, a friendship like this. We met them on MySpace, in LiveJournal communities, over angsty teenage poetry on Tumblr, in the comments sections of Instagram posts.

Over the years, I’ve collected a few friends this way, from Bournemouth to Ontario to Dubai and back, following one another from platform to platform, forging deep bonds and inside jokes.

Credit: Robin Cowcher

I’ve met one or two of them, when inconvenient layovers make for convenient excuses to see if our textual chemistry can thrive in the sunlight. Good news: it can!

This isn’t really a new concept, either. Gen X had forums and messenger apps, Boomers loved their anonymous chat rooms, and pen pals existed long before the postal service. Friendship from afar: just another thing Millennials didn’t invent – but maybe we’ve perfected it.

This friend and I live in opposite time zones, so I often find a flurry of messages from her right under my morning alarm. Details about another clash with her work nemesis, a stupid video about a gay labrador, a recipe for a single-serve protein brownie, her stream of consciousness at the gym, our horoscopes, a picture of her cat. “Good morning” is what this chaotic deluge really says. “I love you! From all the way over here!”

In some ways, she is who I share my life with. She was the first person I told about my book deal. I’ve talked her through a panic attack or 12. We know things about one another that even our therapists have never heard. Battle scars and late-night feelings, hopes for our futures and all our big mistakes, politics, plans, baby names, bad dates, joy, grief, and everything in between – there is almost nothing we don’t share, except for a few crucial details.

Our surnames, for instance. Our email addresses, where we work, or any actual identifying information about the real person behind the screen. If either of us ever asked, I think we would probably be happy to share some of this. But perhaps we wouldn’t. Maybe we like it this way.

Ask any hairdresser, Uber driver, or bartender pulling a quiet shift: people love sharing their most private selves with a perfect stranger. Anonymity offers a kind of intimacy that is as freeing as it is comforting as it is addicting. Why spoil the magic?

Then again, maybe it’s not the mystery we like. Maybe it’s the safety.

Not that long ago, we were all advised never to publish our full names on the internet, but now, we live our whole lives online. Send me a screenshot of someone’s Bumble profile, and in minutes I can turn their digital footprint into an open book. With all that privacy gone, there’s so much we’re vulnerable to. Although I would like to believe that I have a good nose for deception, I’m sure anyone who has ever been tricked into paying off a tax debt with Apple gift cards once thought the same.

Friendship from afar: just another thing Millennials didn’t invent – but maybe we’ve perfected it.

Between 2022 and 2023, more than 2.5 per cent of people in Australia experienced a scam or online impersonation, and that’s not even the worst of it: frequently, the people conducting these catfishing or pig-butchering scams aren’t disgraced Nigerian princes, but victims of human trafficking.

Is my friend being held prisoner in a Cambodian warehouse right now? Have all our years of contact been a hoax? Whose cat has she been sending me pictures of? When is she going to drain my bank account, and will she keep texting me after?

This is where you ask me why I risk it. Why don’t I just play it safe and find friends closer to home, people I can really trust?

Maybe there’s just something so pure about loving someone for exactly who they are – not for their looks, status, proximity, or what they can offer you, but their personality alone. Maybe the world is so big and lonely that when you spark with someone, you hold on to them at any cost. Maybe I’m really just so fundamentally uncomfortable with human vulnerability that I prefer my relationships with a buffer zone of at least 4000 kilometres.

I’m sure my bestie will have some insight into this; she knows me better than anyone. I’ll send her a message about it now, and report back when she wakes up.