Are Internet Friends Better than IRL Friends? With Katherine Dee (Default Friend)

Journalist Katherine Dee joins Simone and Malcolm for a deep dive on mediated relationships. They discuss intimacy via screens, "real" internet friends, social media personas, roleplaying communities, and lessons from Katherine's experiences with online dating.

Katherine Dee: [00:00:00] In the kind of environment we live in, either you have no friends and only very perfunctory relationships, or you have, or you're, like, isolate, you're physically isolated but you have these deep internet relationships.

Katherine Dee: Um, and I think that's sort of like an interesting, like what is the value of someone who like you don't really go deep with but like you have a lot of physical experiences with? Like you're both, you know, like you're maybe You always see them at church or like you play basketball with them or something and you have that kind of like regularity and the relationship is less based on this confessional sort of thing that millennials love so much, um, and more, more based on like physical movement somehow, or like involvement in a project that's bigger than oneself.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, everyone. We are very excited to be joined today by Catherine Dee, AKA Default Friend, one of the world's preeminent internet experts and historians in internet culture. She is absolutely insightful.

Simone: She is a journalist who contributes to quite a few different [00:01:00] outlets. She's a blogger. She's just. Very insightful and fun to talk with and she suggested something that really piqued our interest when we were scheduling this podcast, the durability of mediated relationships. Catherine, what do you have in mind here?

Katherine Dee: Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. Like how much intimacy. can be fostered just completely over a screen or on the phone? Um, and it's sort of an open ended question, but it's something that I think about a lot. I guess, maybe a more fun way to ask is, like, how real are internet friends?

Simone: It's such a good

Malcolm: question. Which is to say that I think that the different contexts in which we communicate with somebody Access different parts of our brain, and to an extent, you are literally communicating with a different person. So in a way, a multimedia friendship can be much deeper than a non multimedia friendship.

Malcolm: By this, what I mean is the person who talks [00:02:00] with Simone over the phone. Versus the person who talks with Simone in person, versus the person who writes emails to Simone, versus the person who writes, you know, one way we used to communicate when we were apart from each other was through journal posts. So Simone would write eight pages of journals about her day and then I would like annotate that afterwards as like a, oh, you did this, this is interesting.

Malcolm: And each one of those I feel is talking with. A slightly different person living in the same person's head. Yeah,

Simone: actually. So there's, there's a, and people think we're really crazy for doing this. Um, those who watch video of our podcast, because Malcolm and I are in the same house, but we, we always do podcasts from different rooms and that's actually like very much a good illustration of how for us, we, we will actively mediate our relationship through a video call.

Simone: Um, just to get into a certain different mind state. Um, because. I, for example, think very differently when I'm alone in a room than when I'm in a, in a room with a person, even if it's Malcolm, who might as well just be me because we're [00:03:00] the same person. So I think that's, that's really interesting.

Simone: What are your thoughts

Malcolm: on all this?

Katherine Dee: Um, I, I think that you can actually get closer, um, in, in mediated relationships than you can, um, in physical world ones. I mean, part of that is just that you act you know, you actually can spend more time with the person, even though it's a different type of time, right?

Katherine Dee: Um, and there's, I, I think, actually you could be more deceptive in real life than in cyberspace. In cyberspace, you could lie about Right? Like your profession or your hair color or things like that. Um, but you, there's the, you can't really lie emotionally as much, especially after you hit a certain amount of time with someone.

Katherine Dee: And I feel like with a lot of like digital relationships for really, if you have a high volume of communication, which a lot do because we're always sort of ambiently on our phones or ambiently online. Um. You could actually start to merge with the other [00:04:00] person and I don't know if that's healthy, that could be actually very toxic, but I do think um, if not like durable, like you actually can get closer.

Katherine Dee: Um, and yeah, I just think, I just think about that a lot and like what happens to relationships where you have that like closeness and then you bring it into the physical world. Does it change?

Malcolm: Well, so something that, that, you know, we've talked about in other places and we might do a full episode on this.

Malcolm: is the way that online environments are structured changes the type of interactions and views that will be espoused in them. Because it naturally leads to specific types of status hierarchies within those communities. So you take a something like Reddit, right? Where the most average liked opinion is the most likely to be seen.

Malcolm: Meaning you're going to get very normie, inoffensive, sort of left leaning opinions. Whereas you take something like, um, 4chan, where it's the most stimulating opinion is the most likely to be seen. So you're likely to get the most offensive opinions rising to [00:05:00] the top. Or you can contrast that with something like Twitter, um, where you know, for something I wrote to be seen.

Malcolm: It actually helps more if somebody disagrees with it and, and, and ratios me, you know, retweets me, um, than if they like it in terms of getting it in front of other people, so you end up with, you know, pointlessly offensive takes often in that community, um, in a different way than they're pointlessly offensive on 4chan, where they're just meant to be mentally stimulating unfortunate, like the maximum emotional response instead of the maximum disagreement or, um, and so within these different communities, I wonder how you think about different environments, how they change, whether it's romantic or friendships that form in those environments.

Katherine Dee: Yeah, that's actually, this is like an interesting point because I think like when there's like the public facing. Expression right on the Twitter timeline versus in the Twitter DMS, and then there's 1 on 1 DMS, and then there's group chats, right? And in all of those situations, there's different incentives, but I think it's I [00:06:00] think we could think about it in the same way as, um, you know, the difference in an office versus someone you meet at you know, through a club or hobby, right? Because you're, there's, there's, you have to bring a different piece of yourself to that environment. Um, when I think about like online relationships, I guess I've like often, and even when I've written about it, I think about it in like the, like one on one, right?

Katherine Dee: Um, and. Somehow carrying someone with you everywhere. But I haven't thought about it as much, um, in these sort of more public environments. And that's a, that's a really, it's a really good point because then you're constructing a character and maybe actually you can't form deep relationships in certain public venues in the same way you can't necessarily in a Goldman Sachs office, right?

Malcolm: Well, I mean, is there some particular experience that you experience that is particularly evocative around this question?

Simone: Um,

Katherine Dee: yeah, I mean, and this, this, it's interesting [00:07:00] because like I've, I've read a lot about like other people experiencing this too um, like talking to someone so much that like you almost, um, hallucinate their presence or like being on a phone call where like you feel like you're in the same physical space.

Katherine Dee: Um, and it's, it's funny, there's one study that I bring up a lot and I can't seem to, I was looking for it today. But there's, um, three different women, it was an Israeli study, who were in these digital relationships, and they started hallucinating the presence of their lover and, um, the, their touch, and it was considered a psychotic symptom.

Katherine Dee: But I, but when I read this, I always thought is it a psychotic symptom, or is there something about Filling in the blanks in our head or something, right? There's another study that was done where in game, like eye contact, um, affects people the same way as like real life eye contact or like eye contact is like subday, like whatever would represent eye [00:08:00] contact in like the particular game, which I thought it was like really interesting, right?

Katherine Dee: There is some physical, like physiological thing happening there.

Simone: I, one thing that I'm also thinking about here that's like this, this conversation is changing the way that I think about catfishing. Um, like part of me is well, you know, as long as people never meet in person, you know, is catfishing really that bad of a thing?

Simone: Because I think that the emotional connection that many people are building is very real, even if I think I'm talking to a 24 year old. You know, 5'9 gorgeous woman.

Malcolm: So there's this great catfishing case, I love true crime internet stuff, um, where a guy was dating this, this with catfishing this young girl.

Malcolm: So he was pretending to be a young, you know, sniper in the military. Um, and then he got in a fight with another guy who wasn't catfishing the girl, but he knew in person. And so then she goes and he kills the other guy in, in, in real life. So he can have this girl who he's catfishing, [00:09:00] even though she thinks that he's 30 years younger than he is.

Malcolm: And then he finds out that actually she was. Like an old woman and, and had been catfishing him the whole time. Um, and so it can hurt people, Simone. Um,

Katherine Dee: but I think that's, that's a good, but I, I agree with you, Simone. Like I, I, this is something I've written a lot about. I actually think lying has is different in certain online social contexts, um, because it's can be expressing like a greater emotional truth that you can't express because you don't have body language.

Katherine Dee: And so maybe there's certain kinds of lies that are done because they're like. Social expedient, or you want clout or whatever, but then there's lies that you have to tell because it, it, there's some sort of shared narrative, or there's some sort of shared world building that's inherent in not having a physical space with someone.

Katherine Dee: Hmm,

Simone: yeah. I also like speaking of the physical barrier here, like whether or not, you know, the problem is that you're actually, you know, a 72 year old male or whether the problem is you are an [00:10:00] AI, like one thing that Malcolm and I talk about a lot because we really want our kids to be exposed to ambitious, smart, really well informed friends is we're sort of thinking, okay, well, you know, should we just set up our kids with AI friends that are like really smart, really ambitious, like their peer network.

Simone: Yeah. Just that you know, a lot of their friends that we try to set them up with are like literal AI's that they just develop close friendships with that. We'll tell them that they're AI's, but. Honestly, from various like simulated boyfriend, girlfriend scenarios that seem to be out there now, maybe

Malcolm: that doesn't shame those types of relationships if they won't see them as lesser.

Malcolm: But the question is, if they don't see them as lesser, would they still be motivated to form real connections to people and build real relationships?

Simone: Right. But I'm curious to get your thoughts, Catherine, on like how mediated relationships where there isn't even like the ability to ever meet a carbon based consciousness.

Katherine Dee: I, I'm on the fence about it because I don't really think it's [00:11:00] that different than the attachments people have to like fictional characters. Um. And, you know, there's a lot of, a lot is probably a stretch, but there are people who have, um, romantic attachments to fictional characters, enough that there's such a thing called fictosexuality, which is distinct from robot fetishism, right, which is people who fall in love with their real dolls or whatever.

Katherine Dee: Um, right. It's like its own thing. Um, and it's that's, I mean, maybe in that case, like the AI is, it's better, you know, like if it's, if it's something in us that causes us to have these relationships anyway, um, I mean, here's a really corny like terrible thing, but you know, what if Dante had a Beatrice AI, right?

Katherine Dee: You know what well, he

Simone: practically did. I mean, he, he wrote so much fan fiction about her basically.

Katherine Dee: Exactly. I, to me there's no, there's no difference between like his sort of obsession with this woman he saw twice. Yeah. Um, and then someone sort [00:12:00] of like. Quote unquote, like falling in love with an anime character, Harry Potter character.

Katherine Dee: Oh my god, I love

Simone: that you just drew that comparison. Yes, because there is no difference, and that would absolutely destroy so many of my fancy literature friends. So, thank you.

Malcolm: So, something I'm wondering if you've ever dug into in terms of internet history around this sort of stuff, when I hear these stories...

Malcolm: A community that I used to really love to dig into when I was younger, and I don't know how young you are, but I think I might be a bit older than you, was the Second Life community and their relationships that they were forming in that, in that environment. Um, and so many of the wild stories of that community just seemed to mirror.

Malcolm: What people think is like a new internet phenomenon,

Simone: like the meta stuff, right? I remember one

Malcolm: story of this group, a couple met on second life and they got married and then they realized they didn't like each other in person, but they stayed married living in the same house, but would only talk through their computers.

Malcolm: Um, [00:13:00] and, but this sounds like a

Simone: modern No, that sounds so romantic to me. Are you kidding me?

Malcolm: Yeah, it might have been World of Warcraft. And there's one of the two. That's where like all the weird online stuff used to

Katherine Dee: happen. Yeah, it's, it's, and it wasn't even really new then because like people would do the same kind of stuff on multi user dungeons.

Katherine Dee: Um, which is, again, they're, they're, they're role, they're basically role playing games, but they're text based. Um, no, I, I'm Can you talk about those and the culture that was in them? Yeah, um, it was a, a lot of, some of them were, there was like gameplay, but a lot of them were like, Sort of like chat rooms or like chat rooms that have a collaborative story telling element to them.

Katherine Dee: Um, and there's, you know, the very similar story that I like, I return to all the time because I think it's so interesting and I think it's still applicable today. Um, It's in either Life on the Screen or The Second Self by Sherry Turkle. This, [00:14:00] um, couple falls in love, or so they think, over a multi user dungeon.

Katherine Dee: So in this sort of role playing chat room. And they meet in person. There's no chemistry. And then, when they're interviewing the male half, he says, you know, Well, I looked through our chat logs, and I had projected connection and romance that wasn't there. And it and there's something like he had interpreted, he'd misinterpreted the text.

Katherine Dee: Um, and I just to I know that sort of sounds like contradictory to everything I just said about e romance and like digital friendships. But I think because we're so toxically plugged in, that actually prevents that kind of. Misreading, um, or at least ideally it will, it would prevent prevent that, but I thought it was just so interesting.

Katherine Dee: Like we are, it is like interpreting people and text based medium is really just like interpreting. Literature, um, people will have radically different ideas about a [00:15:00] poem or even a short story and see things that aren't there. And it's especially reflected in fandom when it's people will see a whole homoerotic romance hidden in the text, and you're like, well, what, what are you talking, like, where'd you get that?

Katherine Dee: But they really believe it and they'll give, they'll have receipts at the wazoo.

Simone: Well, I think that's one of the special things about mediated relationships is depending on how you're coming into them, you can take the most generous, charitable, inspiring, whatever interpretation of someone. And I think it's a lot harder to.

Simone: Um, take a pessimist, a more pessimistic approach, whereas in person, I think that like people end up taking more pessimistic interpretations and also people's what we would call overlay states can more easily pollute the situation, like if you're hot or tired or hungry and you're together in person, like it's more likely to lead to negative interactions, whereas if you're interacting asynchronously with someone via it.

Simone: email or even just text or whatever, like you're probably not going to be interacting with them when you're at this like really low point with your mood. So [00:16:00] also the interactions you have are probably more likely to be like a little bit more mentally sound and stable than if you guys were together in person, I'm thinking, but maybe that's not the case.

Simone: I also imagine like we live in an age in which people have. some serious anxiety problems, um, that I'm like, I'm, I'm one of these people, like it's, it's hard to go outside or it's hard to make friends and interact with people. And so I also imagine that mediated relationships are kind of a solution for a generation of people that suffers from more mental health issues than previous generations.

Simone: The

Malcolm: ability to access mediated relationships is what causes those anxiety problems because you are allowed to indulge in that.

Katherine Dee: I think that's partially true. And I also think like Um, there's, in, in person, there's sort of like, you can have a lot of shallow connections that are, like, satisfying and serve a purpose, um, whereas in the kind of environment we live in, either you have no friends and only very [00:17:00] perfunctory relationships, or you have, or you're, like, isolate, you're physically isolated but you have these deep internet relationships.

Katherine Dee: Um, and I think that's sort of like an interesting, like what is the value of someone who like you don't really go deep with but like you have a lot of physical experiences with? Like you're both, you know, like you're maybe You always see them at church or like you play basketball with them or something and you have that kind of like regularity and the relationship is less based on this confessional sort of thing that millennials love so much, um, and more, more based on like physical movement somehow, or like involvement in a project that's bigger than oneself.

Simone: I'm also I'm thinking about mediated relationships in the past and I'm thinking like my, um, My maternal grandparents met once at a USO ball in Paris right as the, as World War II was ending. My grandmother was French, my grandfather was Inoki, and they Not French, Russian. Sorry, well, yeah, she was Russian who had yeah, fled to [00:18:00] She called herself French.

Simone: She wanted to be French so bad. So you're disgracing her memory here. How dare you. Um, but anyway, so like after they met, um, they exchanged letters for a long time and then eventually they just decided to get married. Based on these letters alone. This is a totally mediated relationship. My grandmother moved sight unseen.

Simone: To a, an outhouse, one bedroom farmhouse full of a family of people. And my grandfather to marry him in Oklahoma. And it was a very rough ride for both of them, I think, but they stayed married throughout their entire lifetimes and had a pretty successful marriage. And one thing I'm wondering is tactically speaking, could mediated relationships be a solution to some market failures in the dating world where if, if, if we, if more people committed to.

Simone: Developing a strong connection and aligned incentives and goals via a mediated relationship and committed to marriage, like before ever meeting in person, because it seems like the visual emphasis [00:19:00] seems to be what kills people's ability to connect right now especially if they want to get married because they're so focused on visuals and like instant am I super hot for this person?

Simone: No. Okay. I'm not even going to consider them even if everything else on paper is perfect. And we'd be actually really good long term partners. I'm wondering if forced commitment based on a mediated relationship that. does work really well, can produce good long term relationships. What do you think?

Katherine Dee: Um, so I actually did this. I married an internet stranger after very little time. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually in my second marriage right now, which is more, a better, I don't want to say better, a different situation. But the reason that my first marriage didn't work was because. There wasn't, we, you know, we experienced not to air my, my dirty laundry on a podcast, but we had some personal tragedies that were like insurmountable that I think would have been surmountable if we had more community support and were more grounded in a culture and community.

Katherine Dee: Um, and. So, I think what, you know, the [00:20:00] failure of relationships, it's so much of that is your environment we I think we, we lasted a very long time, you know, for, especially for the strangeness and unique circumstances, but it just couldn't, it just couldn't work because we were, like, on an island, right, and we both have very good relationships with our family, but, But you know, he was from a different country, we were living in a state that I didn't grow up in, so like my community there was not as strong.

Katherine Dee: Which of

Malcolm: the relationships was the one that was the short online relationship first?

Katherine Dee: My, my first, my first marriage, um, and yeah, yeah, um, sorry about that, but, but my, yeah, my second, now I'm on my second marriage and it's formed much more traditionally, like certainly more like in person time and like more integrating into one another's You know, real world lives and it's, I don't think that it was that I met what ruined, ruined or ended my first, my first relationship wasn't the, that [00:21:00] it started as a mediated relationship, rather, we weren't part of a broader cultural fabric.

Katherine Dee: And there's certain problems that like, I mean, it's total amicable, totally amicable split. Right. But it just, there's some things you really need help. And if you don't have that help, or like the role models, it's so, it's, it can be really hard.

Malcolm: Well, how did you try to address that with the second relationship?

Katherine Dee: Well, with the second relationship, I, it's now there's like more of an emphasis of making sure that we're grounded in a community and that we're not, so we're not like, you know, striking out on our own in a city where neither one of us has family or connections. There's I think all of those things.

Katherine Dee: Become really important. Um, as you get deeper into a relationship and as you mature into a relationship, um, just just being part of. Something, right, is, it, it helps a lot, um, but yeah, I think just being, we were, like, we, [00:22:00] we didn't really know our neighbors, we weren't really in a city it was just, we were just so isolated, and it was, it was, I think, more problematic, um, than either one of us expected.

Simone: What I like there is you're saying, it doesn't not work, and that if you were maybe to combine people starting relationships in this mediated way. But then when they physically come together, being supported by a broader, culturally aligned community, it actually could work pretty well. Um, yeah.

Katherine Dee: But that would change how people date period.

Katherine Dee: I think um, there's just something where it's like, things are too like piecemeal almost. Um, where I think like it, it could just, it's just really. It's just really hard to navigate the world as a single unit that's kind of floating in this ether of you don't really know where you belong.

Katherine Dee: And I think, not, that's, that won't kill every relationship, but that will put stress on a relationship, especially if you encounter [00:23:00] things that are outside of your control.

Simone: That's fair. Huh. Any other thoughts, Malcolm?

Malcolm: On, on, well, okay, I mean, a direction we could go is this. is pseudonymous relationships that are seen in things like the furry community.

Malcolm: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Katherine Dee: Oh, that's, that's interesting where it's like, they don't, they only know one another through their persona. Yeah. And I

Malcolm: think they, well, there are, they originally meet through that. And I think you see this in many fan communities. Where people will engage through fan characters, you know, My Little Pony, they might have a, I don't know what they would have called them, pony sonas or something.

Malcolm: Um, and, and, and that's how they would have interacted with each other. Because I think even in the furry community, you probably find out pretty quickly who these people are. Like, I doubt there's as much mystery. Whereas I think in some of these fan communities, another great one is that, that fan community around that book about cats.

Malcolm: Um, where a lot of people would [00:24:00] identify as like a, a, a cat Sona thing. Um, there's some YouTubers who, who talk on this stuff, but yeah.

Katherine Dee: Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. I'm, I'm trying to think back to my own experiences. I was really into text based role playing. Um, so it's not quite the same, but it's, it's, it's similar.

Katherine Dee: And I would do like historical role plays. You know, I'm really interested in the 1780s, you know, this week. So I'm going to create a world around that. Awesome. There would be, like, romance elements sometimes, um, and even I'm trying to think of ones that, like, when sometimes these, these role plays will go on for years, right, and you'll be in these narrative relationships, and it, but it doesn't really impact your physical, physical life, and it's I don't think I was, Whatever affection I myself had, not my character had, is not for the person controlling the avatar, it's for...

Katherine Dee: It's for the, the writing and the character they've [00:25:00] constructed and what I've projected into that character in, and that, that world. And I would guess that our fursonas may be similar because there's some element of separation and it's, there's some sort of role playing element there. And it feels, it feels like it's kind of separate, whereas the difference between something like that.

Katherine Dee: And Second Life, it tends to be more like your avatar in Second Life is actually more like your username on Twitter. Um, and there can be a separation there, but it's not as often as there is in like something that's consciously a roleplay. Um, so maybe it, and I guess I am not in the furry community and I haven't talked to people in the furry community, so I guess it could actually go either way.

Katherine Dee: It could, it depends on how they're using the fursona.

Malcolm: Yeah, so this, this roleplaying thing that you're talking about is very... Interesting. Um, so how do you choose the people that are in these persistent communities? Or can people just drop in and you engage with them based on the quality of their writing?

Katherine Dee: Yeah, um, I haven't done it in a really long time. I think the [00:26:00] last time I like Actively was role playing was 2007, but people would just, it was pretty, um, it was a pretty small community. Um, so people just find like forums and then there would be some sort of like gatekeeping or like hazing that would happen and you, you know, you would get accepted in the community or filtered out.

Katherine Dee: Um, and then. People would like gravitate towards one another if they have compatible writing styles and there's usually like a start like a Universal style guide for whatever forum or if you maybe chat room and dependent, you know, you could do it on different platforms and then every if it was like a literary roleplay everyone would write as though they're writing a story and it could be Published in a book and then there's other types of roleplay where like actions are an asterisk or parentheses And usually those are quicker moving.

Katherine Dee: They're probably more likely to be in a chat room. Um, yeah. And it's just, it's just a chemistry thing. Um, sometimes, you know, sometimes you have chemistry with people. Sometimes you don't.

Malcolm: Did you ever meet [00:27:00] any of these people in person or were these relationships always pseudonymous?

Katherine Dee: Yeah. I met one woman in person.

Katherine Dee: I met her when I was like. And, um, then I, I lived in, um, her city very briefly and we, we met up in person and then we were friends until I was like, I don't know, like 25. And then I just stopped using Facebook. And so then we stopped being friends.

Simone: That is actually really, I think it's, it's an underrated element of a friendship.

Simone: Um, that there are some people that you can only be friends with through certain channels. And this doesn't, this is not exclusive to mediated relationships where you like, primarily you had started out there, but there are literal in person friends that I can think of who, because I refuse to use like iMessage after I changed my phone number and I.

Simone: can really access like iMessage, they just refuse to communicate with me on any other channel. So we're just not going to be friends anymore. And I feel like there are some people who can only be contacted through very, very specific platforms. And that's, [00:28:00] it's an interesting thing. It's they don't exist outside of them.

Simone: Um, and it's weird to live in an age where things kind of work that way.

Katherine Dee: I, it, it is weird, but also I wonder like, how different is it from you know, a work friend who like can't make the transition to a different kind of, right? Like you're my, you're my Facebook friend and just whatever. I, I don't like talking to you on iMessage.

Katherine Dee: So that's the, that's that.

Simone: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Oh, gosh. Okay. This was really, really interesting and really, really fun. And I know we're running out of time, so we will let you get back to your life. But Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back on at some point.

Simone: You are absolutely brilliant. Um, and I hope we can talk again soon and everyone else please tell, tell us all where we should find your work.

Katherine Dee: Um, you can find me on Twitter at D or X at default underscore friend, or my blog is just default dot blog. Great.

Katherine Dee: Thank you very [00:29:00] much. Yeah. Thanks.

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