Friendship, one tweet at a time Decodes the unique dynamics of friendships born and sustained on Twitter

Friendship, one tweet at a time

Decodes the unique dynamics of friendships born and sustained on Twitter

Harish Iyengaar is your regular MBA student, whose passions include music and writing. He’s also an avid ‘social networker’, or tweeter. ‘Scaryhairyman’ (as he’s known on Twitter) has nearly 500 followers on the micro-blogging site. One of them is Divya Gangaramani, whom he interacts with every day, but has never met. How does this friendship work? “In my opinion, making friends on twitter is a blessing. You meet people who you never expect to meet and they understand your life views. I find this a very intellectual way of socialising,” says Harish. As Divya (known as ‘ThePappadWoman’ on Twitter) says, “It was Harish’s music tastes that prompted me to follow him. Before we knew it, we were talking about everything.” Harish says it was “Mumbai, misery and music” that got him and Divya talking. They have ‘friended’ each other on Facebook and also chat on WhatsApp. For some, Twitter is a way of expressing themselves to like-minded people, while for others, it’s a place to escape everyday monotony. Nidhi Thakur works as a client executive in a Mumbai-based PR company. But that’s not how nearly 3,000 people on Twitter know her. On Twitter, she is known as Mrs Chulbul Pandey or ‘ChhotaRecharge’ (her handle). “I like Twitter because it’s about friendships by choice,” says Nidhi. “There are no compulsions, no formalities — you can unfollow people if things go haywire.” Sometimes, meeting your online friend for real can often leave you with a bad taste. As was the case with Nidhi. “I met this girl who was known for her attractive pictures on Twitter. But when I saw her, I couldn’t recognise her until she came up to me,” she says. She recounts another incident where she met this boy who sounded interesting on Twitter, but was quite the opposite in person. “In one hour, we spoke for just ten minutes.” Furthermore, the guy in question tweeted about their meeting and said he had an ‘awesome’ time, baffling Nidhi even more. One wonders what legitimacy these friendships have when trust issues are pertinent online. “We're aware that people we meet online might be different in real life, but we continue because of this psychological need to connect with like-minded people,” says Harish. After having known each other for over a year, Harish and Divya now plan to meet. Divya is more excited than anxious, and Harish is confident and rules out any possibility of apprehensions. “I love surprises and don’t really have great expectations for the first meeting. Makes it more interesting that way,” he says with a wink.