What is Friendship?

I recently read that people are relying less on friends and more on themselves, love interests, and family. Whatever happened to true friendship? It is one of the many things that I think about on my off time, which has been plenty, lol.

I start with blaming the internet. How many people get on sites like Facebook and Myspace and set about collecting the most people they can, so they can look important or popular? Not so much on Facebook, but I can remember when I first started on Myspace that I was always hit with people that just happened to be in Virginia and wanted to friend me. I didn't understand totally why? Most, I came to learn, never talked to me. Why do you add someone if you have no intention of talking to them? I have since been better about who I add, but it made me realize just how self-centered a lot of people have become. I more went on the social networking sites to meet people, and maybe be friends OUTSIDE of the net. It would have been okay if that was where a lot of the communication normally came from, but I wanted people that would want to talk to me every blue moon on the phone and every so often say let's go to a movie or let's go drink overpriced (but good lol) coffee and talk. You can't be close friends without seeing someone ever so often. Why do you think most long distance relationship don't work?

Look, the internet, for the most part, was a great invention, but I think people rely on this and texting too much. I know there are cases where people can't meet ever or often. My sister had a great friendship with someone from Kansas and they never met, but they talked to each other like they knew each other for decades and every night pretty much. My sister didn't miss her any less when she passed away in December of 2008. I know people can connect with the just the phone or the net, but you have to have two willing people to make it work.

I also think men see friendship as different then women do, in many cases. Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger, though many now call him a sexist pig lol, to put it in easy words, said that men usually don't friend women that they don't at least see a possibility of having sex with. As a girl that has and does friend men more than women, it kinda made me laugh. I thought back especially on the men when I was in school and realized there was something to that statement. My sister laughed when I told her that. Most of the guys I was buddy buddy with seemed to admit at some point that they liked me and for whatever reason didn't or couldn't or wouldn't date me. Women need to have someone to talk to as a way to feel better. Men I have always seen don't need that as much. My thought is, why do you want to call someone your friend, if you don't want to see how a person reacts to you when you say something and vice versa?

Maybe I am odd, I just want to be able to occasionally see and talk to people I care about, I will never say I am perfect in this area, the internet is an easy thing to rely on, but you can't always feel a human connection or truly know someone when you have a computer screen between the two of you. So how should friendship really be defined?

I guess I have more ponderings here. I might need to revisit this. This thought stream has been going on recently in my head because of dealings with someone and you can only make yourself so crazy, keeping it in your head, lol.