#GoHugo

I've written about meeting my friend Katie in an online forum. That forum has grown, shrunk, exploded, expanded, moved, and imploded. I have made lifelong friends through the various incarnations of the original Jane Magazine message board. Relationships I wouldn't have found had the internet not brought us together.

In my 20s I spent countless hours on this string of message boards meeting people I otherwise wouldn't have had cause to know. We've grown up. Gotten married. Had babies. We have helped each other through break-ups, family deaths, job dilemmas, and lots and lots of silly nonsense. And we lost two people in the last year... life passing before comprehension.


And I've been hurt by strangers I've never met more than I thought possible. You get more than 10 people hidden behind the safety of a keyboard, and mild annoyances can become wild accusations full of vitrol and perceived betrayals. An opinion about whether smoking in restaurants should be banned led to a "board war" with allegiances formed and members dis-membering and others gone inactive reemerging to witness the battle.... like witnesses to a school yard fight.

There is no arguing right and wrong in an online community full of opinionated people. Everyone has their version of ethics and annoyance. And their view of how honest they can and should be.

Whenever I've broken up with these people, I've always come back. A little hardened to the ways of the trolls. Always open to the conversation and perspectives. And sometimes surprised by the love and support coming from a character/person you'd written off as terrible.

Last year one of the long-time member's found out her 3 year old had leukemia. In about 24 hours the group had raised nearly $2000 which was collected by a single individual who then sent the money via care packages for the child as well as the parents and siblings. We're currently a group of less than 150 people with probably only 50-70 often active members. When someone is in need, those wounds and perceived allegiances disappear.

A former member, run off by more internet bad behavior, recently found out her just-one-year old has a rare form of kidney cancer. Rallying the internet troops, various fund raisers were started by friends and family and I see daily updates from individuals closer to her and her family than I trying to lift them up during their ordeal. Their cause has gone viral (how I loathe that phrase) beyond their immediate internet circles into a movement rally around a little boy and the unfairness of cancer.

And my heart swells.... with sadness at their pain and pride at the way a community of sort-of-strangers (well beyond our little community of 150) can come together to remind people they're not alone... even if they've never met.

And so to the naysayers of message boards, of online dating, of "friending" those folks from High School you weren't really friends with... I say:

Connect. Connect as much as you can. As often as you can. Tell your story. Share someone else's. Like. Up. Heart. +1. Share. Because sometimes knowing someone you don't know is thinking about you, or has been there, or wants to help you pay a bill... sometimes that makes things just a bit easier. *

#GoHugo. Learn about Hugo or donate or make a silly picture like I just did... makes the big scary world a little smaller and safer.

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 *That said, if you have the flu, please don't post about it. I'm sorry you have anal leakage, but this is not what I'm talking about.

**Next week I'll tell you more about bumping FitBits with a coworker like they activated our superpowers of dorkery. In fact... that's exactly what we did...