meeting online people in real life
Meeting people from the internet is very normal for me and I started that pretty early.
The first time were queer people my age from an online group on the dominant social media in Germany back then, schuelervz (you schuelercc people don't know what's good ;D). I was 14 I think (2010), and even a good girl and asked my mother for permission. We met at mine and hung out, walked a bit through the city, got ice cream together, and later took the train to the next big city over. It was fun.
There were several other occasions where I planned to meet with others in that time, but their parents made issues, so it didn't work out.
Later on at 19, I started out online dating and went on several dates with different people (some of them are insane stories, but I digress). I was also on Tumblr, submitting a profile of myself to blogs about sapphicdating (I knooow). That matched me and my ex-girlfriend, and then we found out we were near the same city, in the same university and in the same courses. Intense coincidence! I had even seen her before in lecture and wondered if she's gay. So we met in the lecture hall thanks to Tumblr.
After that relationship, I was on a Discord server and met my now fiancée. I also met with some guy from the same server platonically at Subway and then we went grocery shopping, and I met several people via Bumble BFF, too. I also met someone from my distance university because we discovered we're in the same city.
I keep wondering if I missed anyone, but really that sums it up. It feels more in my head than it looks like here because so much was online dating or Bumble BFF, which was several people each. I started meeting people from online because I was a very reclusive teen, very isolated and only hung out online mostly, aside from the horse stable. It felt like the best way to meet people like me.
I can't really gauge how it is nowadays - is it now very normalized to meet, or not? Back when I started, it was super controversial to meet someone online. Could be a pedo or any other predator. Online dating wasn't really around yet; maybe some niche sites for people 50+, but not Tinder, you know. People everywhere looked at you weird when you said you met people from the internet, like they must have been stinky weirdos. Now with online dating so prevalent for like 10 years and many people meeting through social media or Discord, is it still that weird? Has it maybe gone the other way around and now it's weird to meet because it's more comfortable and less weird to just keep it online, especially when it's transcontinental and expensive too? Are zoomers opposed to meeting in real life because the switch from text/call to hanging out is too difficult? Would love to hear about it.
In any way, I think I am very comfortable with doing it and I'm likely to take people up on the offer to meet in public, like in a cafe. Who knows? When we're enough people, we could do Bearblogger Germany Meetup ;D
I've also had a videocall with another blogger last month.
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Published 23 Mar, 2025