Maybe We'll Be Invited To Guest Lecture

Seems someone else is interested in friendship and the web.  Imagine that.  I stole a peek at the syllabus and may read along.  It seems that the distinction/blurry line between friend and fan that can sometimes arise in this particular medium of blogging is not addressed specifically in the syllabus -- nor, really, is the concept of friendship in the first place.  That's where we can help, perhaps.  Maybe we should make a YouTube video about going from fans to friends, and submit it for consideration. 

I'm still stuck on what you talked about, friends and fans.  I think there's more to be hashed out, and I'll probably be noodling it around in my head for a while.  You can be a fan in real life (when I have a crush, it feels like being a fan), but it's less likely.  Fandom arises when the information flow is unequal, when one person is paying a lot more attention to the other person than is reciprocated.  Like it or not, people who read our words know us in a way that we don't know them, until they write and begin a conversation and we meet and fall in love with them and all that.