I am the living embodiment of this not being the case and with only a small sliver of examples from the story of my life, I’ll show you what what you are saying is false.

When I was 21, I moved from Boston to New York City. Contrary to the persona I project into the world, I’m an awkward, shy, anxious, introverted human.

I went to an online gaming community and asked if people lived in the city and wanted to hang out.

I got my first community job through this community.

I met my husband through this community.

I met my best friend through this community.

This community was the sole source of comfort for me on the day my mother died — the only people I spoke to at 5 AM, a continent away from her, or during the 6 hour plane ride while I flew back from west to east to attend her funeral.

This community has not just helped me.

It paid to clothe and house the nephews of a community member after his brother was murdered by his ex-girlfriend.

It has pooled money to help people who found themselves homeless.

It has gotten people jobs when they found themselves laid off.

It crowdfunded bail money. One of the community’s members was a lawyer and took on the case pro bono. The reason that man did not go to jail is 100% because of the online community I frequent— because one of us offered to be his lawyer, because we raised the bail funds, because the lawyer took all our thoughts and support and testimonials to the judge and our words and acts overwhelmed the judge and made him believe that our online community would be the support system he needed to stay on track.

He’s still on track.

I’ve never met that guy, by the way. Until the lawyer took the case, he hadn’t met him, either. I have no idea what his name is — and I gave him $50 without hesitation.

Professionally, I’ve run online communities where people have met and got married. I arranged the proposal dinner and eulogized a community member that was a super fan. I’d met her maybe three times in my life, at work events, but I’d known her for years, and I cried so fucking hard at that funeral her mother had to calm me down.

In short: you can believe that online communities are not real communities. You can even take the body of my work above and say those things only became real when people met face-to-face (and then I’ll reply with the wealth of friendships and life changing events that have happened to me with people I have never met).

You are wrong. This outdated way of thinking, of saying “online communities are not real communities and online relationship are not real relationships” is hindering the wonderful, beautiful, positive aspects of online communities bring to better the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every day.

We need to celebrate all that good. We need to acknowledge it exists and it’s powerful.