The open world wide web gave us unlimited storage space for points of our existence. As it becomes saturated with things fighting for our attention, it's more important to find allies to get a little rampant with and feel connected to amidst the vast cyberspace. Ironically it is simultaneously becoming harder and easier to find friends with things in common. A little chaos helps with that 😏

Have you ever had a friendship blossom so naturally, it is hard to believe you've only just met because you just get each other?

This is an exploration of one such encounter, between LDF and Reka :) A story of chaos, friendship, continuous growth, and how we can cultivate seemingly accidental friendships from precious pockets of virtual serendipity.

For LDF and Reka, their online existence manifested in a wholesome, digitally native friendship that started with a series of serendipitous moments, culminating in a deepened relationship that has spanned to physical spaces, business relationships, and now, an experiment in content-creation (Hint: there’s more than meets the eye 👀 )

Finding proximity in digital spaces

We can define proximity as nearness in space, time, or relationship.

Traditionally, we would develop friendships based on proximity of space, like childhood friends at school, or within a local community. As we grow, and access more places, not only in physical reach but also online, packed with possible connections, there is more variability in the way we discover relationships. They say the best way to find new friends is to go to the same place A LOT. Where are you most frequent? At your favorite coffee shop? If you keep bumping into the same person there, slowly finding out they also have the same area of study, and share interests that creates an even closer proximity of relationship between you.

In today’s internet age, we take the potential of finding proximity a step further. These shared interests may look like a long list of shared Telegram channels, shared Discord servers, subscriptions, or mutual followers across social media.

This is true for LDF and Reka as well. The two officially met for the first time in cyberspace in the Telegram group for AOL.xyz in 2021, then in IRL in at EthBerlin 2022. In between, there were an alarming number of groups, servers and projects shared that built their friendship story and context on one another.

Bumping into each other in cyberspace

The ability to connect across platforms has never been more possible. There is a theory called *Six degrees of separation, *which poses the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other, even across the world. The vastness of global social networks and the internet shrinks to the micro-community level in the context of such a niche interest like web3. This is significantly decreasing the number of needed social connections to get in touch with someone, or find common ground with them.

A decrease from the original "Six degrees of separation" already started before Web3, with platforms like Facebook boasting 4.57 and Twitter with 3.43 average degrees of separation. These measurements don't even account for the effect of shared interests or social status that shrink this even further. Couple the network effects of these platforms with a niche topic like Web3, and that number gets much smaller.

For our story, it felt like we’ve been next to each other this whole time, side by side, completing our own little quests and internet journeys. Sharing 20 different Telegram chats and 14 Discord channels might do that ;) Getting into Web3 from different angles, learning about it in our own individual way, building projects with different missions, but still, accidentally meeting at various touchpoints. There is an important distinction and deviation from traditional relationship building here. This way, enabled by the internet, we majorly focus on the individual pursuit of our own curiosity rather than directly building the relationship itself.

We share these spaces because we intrinsically were motivated to discover them and actually wanted to be there based on our unique interests. These groups and spaces have different contexts and different topics. It allows us to develop a deeper understanding about each other's missions and character, and really see each other as multidimensional beings.

Our relationship itself is platform-agnostic, it does not depend on one central point to function and flourish. The shared spaces are contextual for the conversation and aspect of the relationship that fits into that conversation. If we need to talk about how our projects can work together,  we can text in our shared Guild x Disco Telegram group or email about it. If we want to vibe out and send memes to each other we can go into one of our lil groups that are suited for this. Our conversations can happen in parallel within multiple separate groups, while having touchpoints and contexts to our relationship.**

***Enters super secret 20 member group for a small social Web3 startup in their early beta phase?* 

“Of course, fancy seeing you here"

Becoming friends before you even meet

By participating and doing things together in these shared spaces we find points of compatibility and develop a closer relationship by doing things together. Shared experiences, struggles and little wins, new connection points can be the foundation of a digital relationship. Constantly bumping into each other in social spaces gave us the opportunity to get to know each other before ever meeting in person. It also gave a stable ground for us to realize our friendship and be more purposeful of our shared journey while building our individual ones. And more tangibly, it made writing this piece together extremely intuitive.

Our journeys built up the need and will in both of us to do something together that is fulfilling our curiosities and supports our missions. This lil essay is but a mere introduction to the plethora of experiments we have in store, we are not stopping here. The more observant could find some hints about what we'll do next in this piece. One thing is for sure, there is a niche of us Web3 people that are exploring the edges of media, co-creation, new technologies and community. If you are here you are also that person, stick around for the next one 😏

In the meantime, follow LDF and Reka on Twitter for more hints ;)