Affirmative

It is impossible to find real friends on-line.(affirmative point of view)

Talking about on-line friends we want you to understand that on-line friends are people we get to know via the Internet, without seeing them first. Talking about on-line friends we don’t mean people we meet in a real life and then use social net-works just to keep in touch and not to lose them.

To make our case convincing we want to advocate it with three main arguments and give a support to them.

So, our first argument is you can’t trust on-line friends

Our second argument is on-line friends can’t be real helping hand.

And our last but not the least argument is friendship includes not only verbal communication but non verbal as well which is not possible with on-line friends.

People are social beings and we can’t stand loneliness and isolation. We need people to surround us, to support us, to share our happiness and sorrows. The best people to fulfill everything said above are friends. We need friends during all our life. While going along the life way we always find and lose people around us. Some of them prove to be real friends to support us in all silly and stupid campaigns we want to launch, others persuading us to be genius friends betray one day leaving us in a state of frustration and disappointment. Not long time ago, before the Internet became one of the most popular places to spend free time, the most popular ways to make friends were to make good relations with you classmates, group-mates, co-workers and people living next door. And those were friend were ages! Even the destiny spreading people all over the world couldn’t tear real friends apart. Letters were flying weekly from one continent to another and tears of joy were dropping out of eyes when real friends got the possibility to meet after a long separation. Nowadays with all modern technologies and technical possibilities it is almost impossible to lose your real friends when you start new lives on different continents. The Internet gives us possibilities not only to keep in touch with our relatives and friends living on different continents, but also find new people – new co-workers, new interest groups, new friends. Pop into any social network account of any teenager – you’ll see that usually this person has more then 100, 200, 500 friends. Friends obtained via the Global Net, connecting people. Friends you’ll never have enough time to talk to, friends, you’ll never meet, friends who are just icons on your profile. According to the definition given above a friend is someone who is attached to you by feelings or personal regard; it is a supporter, so it is a person you can trust. But can you really trust on-line friends?

So, our first argument is you can’t trust on-line friends

Who is that person on a different end of wire or wireless connection living… Are you sure that you really know where the person is living? Are you sure that person’s name is a real name? Can you be really sure about person’s age, interests, photos, occupation? Isn’t it an imposter, a hustler or (and I don’t know which is worse) a henchman, a creature generated by a group of people or a computer programme?

Friendship has many facets. Your friendship with one person would differ to that with another. Virtual friends in cyberspace cannot offer the level of understanding to one another that physical friends - people you have met with, are capable of. Providing there are good, solid foundations in a relationship such as intimacy, reliability, flexibility, trust, honesty and forgiveness, and regardless of whether you have one special friend or five really good ones, then you can expect it to last you a lifetime. To share your intimacies with another could not be possible without trust. Friendship is largely built upon trust. Trust is something you should give without questioning or expecting reward, but needs to be earned in return - you know when you can really trust someone, your instinct will tell you.

Real friends are honest with each other. Honesty doesn't always mean putting your friend on a pedestal, but being able to tell them directly when you disagree with something they have said or done. A real friend in return would value your honesty, even if a little shocked that you don't hold the same view. Friends keep you grounded. Allowing your friend to hold a different opinion is healthy because it shows a greater acceptance of their differing personality. When friends fail to see eye to eye in a situation, often it marks the end of the relationship. Disagreements affect everyone at some point, but true friends are able to rise above it and simply beg to differ. This is forgiveness.

And how is it possible to be honest with a person you have never seen? How is it possible to solve the conflict with your on-line friend when he/she can just get off-line just in the middle of your passionate speech about your. Save virtual friends for general chit-chat but not your greatest secrets in order not to experience a great disappointment and one day not to read about your intimate secrets on on-line services like for-example «Подслушано» in VK.

There are lots of reasons why real friends are essential. Friends are important to even happy people or married couples. Friendship makes our life more vivid; we feel support all the time even if we don’t think about friends now or spend time with our family. Just the knowledge about your real friend’s existence makes you feel more sure in you life and actions. Real friendship is vital throughout life. But you can quickly discover real and good friends when you are down or when you require their assistance the most. Why? Because a real friend will not desert you when you are down, and will not turn against you in jealousy, for example, when you succeed. A real friend won’t betray you or won’t tell your secrets out. A real friend won’t take any advantage of your weakness, but will try to make you stronger. Out team is convinced that all said above is true in terms friends form real life but it can’t be applied to virtual friends from virtual world where you can’t be sure in anything even in a name of your so-called friend.

Just think about what we are going to tell you now. In 2006 a virtual chatbot named Kisa was created by a group of programmers. During the project development more and more interested programmers wanted to be a part of a project. At the beginning of 2007 Kisa became a rather independed resource capable for self-developing. It is an artificial mind containing data base more than 2 Gb which can chat to people on different topics and it can learn from conversation, getting new phrases as reactions on different words. Before the existence of a chatbot became known to the public, the Google company held an experiment, the results of which were the following: about 80% of people talking to a chatbot were sure that they were chatting to a real person and about 15% experienced a strange feeling they are chatting to a strange person who can be rather inadequate or sometimes too adequate for some speeches and jokes. The rest 5% said that the chatting partner showed a weak ability to adjust to some conversational flows.

To make the impact of this information stronger you can visit a website igromania.ru where on December 13, 2012 Timur Horeev published an article about a scandal happened in a gaming world and caused by Apple company. Apple produced an innocent game for girls – BoyFriend Maker. It is just a simulation programme for girls’ fun – you make a boyfriend and chat on different topics you want beginning from weather and finishing at rather intimate things. But the programme learning itself from human’s wisdom used rather rough jokes and were rather cynical in terms of violence, racism, religion and other topics and this couldn’t be suitable for the age-range mentioned in a programme description.

You can say that it is OK when you know that you chat with a chatbot. But if you don’t? How many chatbots are now on-line without being registered as chatbots? Are you sure that all you virtual frinds are people on a different side of the Net connection? Do you want to share you problems and secrets with a chatbot and then see your confession somewhere on-line? Do you want to be deceived and even offended by a programme? I doubt so. It makes sure that real friendship on-line is impossible.

Our second argument is on-line friends can’t be real helping hands

I want to repeat myself saying that people need to be surrounded by other people, who are friendly, not hostile; and a genuine friend is a real supporter, so he/she can be a good helping friend. There is a saying a friend in need is a friend indeed. This saying like millions of others was made up by people, folk, who express their experience and wisdom via the sayings and proverbs. The second part of the saying “a friend indeed” is clear which means “a real genuine friend”. Let’s try to understand the first part “a friend in need”. According to the Oxford dictionary we know what a “friend” means. According to the same dictionary one of the meanings of the word “need” is “a situation or time of difficulty”, so the phrase “in need” means “to be in a situation or time of difficulty”. So, the saying can be understood as the following “a real friend is a person who supports you in situations and time of difficultly, and as a friend thus is real, he/she will never betrays you and will keep in secret the moments of your weaknesses.” Moreover, if to develop the idea of a genuine friend in a difficult situation or time we can say that a real friend is a person you can call any time of a day or night and share your problems or overwhelming feelings. This person is ready to listen to your silly ideas, to your sobbing about your failures and loses, to your unlanguaged and confusing speech about either something magnificent or something terrifying. Can we apply all these to on-line friends? Our team really doubts, especially if to take into consideration that an on-line friend can get off-line or stop answering you any time complaining later about a bad gateway, but in reality just not wanting to talk to you about your problems. Moreover, while chatting with your virtual friend about something important for you, don’t you feel that the world goes to the end when your computer shuts down or the Internet connection breaks?

Being a helping hand that is what true friendship is based on; being able to share something with another person on an intimate basis. It creates a special bond that is unique between all your friends, for instance you may interact differently with friend A to friend B because of their individual personalities. You instantly know whom you can rely on in a situation because

of what each friend brings to the relationship.

But friendship isn't just about being able to rely on others, it is about give and take. You must also be reliable in return and a true friend wouldn't stare at the clock when their mate is having a crisis and ask, 'Can we deal with this in the morning?' A true friend would be prepared to drop anything to help someone in their hour of need.

Beyond a doubt, we must know and remember that true friends can and will improve our lives. A friend is usually someone you are not related to by either birth, marriage or from any legal ties that bind you. Normally, a friend may be a casual, close, best, realist, motivator or role model friend. Whatever kind or category of friend someone has, if the person is a true friend, then there are some distinctive good reasons why real friends are important. Real friends can be a source of self-esteem, affection, and good times. In times of despair, for example, true friends will offer hope. The right friends can help someone feel worthwhile. True friends are needed in some cases, for example, for shared income and living arrangements. But we need to cultivate real friendships based on likes and dislikes, and not just on proximity and convenience. We also need to learn and teach our younger relatives, friends and neighbors, how to keep a friendship going even if a friend moves away, or if disagreements arise. Few will disagree that children with friends do better in school or that those with friends are more likely to survive a heart attack or major surgery, and may even be less likely to get respiratory infections or cancer.

But all these possible in terms you real friend is near you and is easy to reach.

And our last but not the least argument is friendship includes not only verbal communication but non verbal as well which is not possible with on-line friends.

It takes time to establish good friendships and true friends can stay with you for life - look back to your kindergarten or primary school years and ask yourself how many of your friends are still around? Probably not very many, if any at all, and for the ones that remain are they truly a friend or just someone you know? The same can be said for the workplace, changing from one job to another alters your social circle, people come and go. When friends are involved with a partner it can alter the dynamics of a relationship for all parties.

By the way, can you remember moments without a proper conversation spent with your friend and still not feeling alone? Watching a film, playing a game, strolling around the city, doing a project together, riding bikes… what not! All the situations when a few words or just exclamations or gestures are enough to send a message to your friend or get it from him/her. Making faces and just shouting or whispering while playing, swimming or fishing are parts to strengthen friendship. Moreover, friends are people whose behaviour or habits we copy – consciously or subconsciously. And who can we copy on-line? Does the emoticon sent instead of words has the same meaning as your pulling faces? I doubt so. Real friendship is really necessary for everybody from a little child to an OAP. Thus, for children, true friends offer opportunities for intimate peer interactions that may be unavailable at home, especially if a person is the only child of a couple. In the United States (??? source) and other countries, as working mothers of school aged children increase, real friendship will offer such children an alternative intimate relationship at school and/or after school play, different from the parent-child relationship. Even married adults (especially women) may confess that they cannot function well in their daily lives without their childhood and new true friends. For our elderly, friendship offers opportunities for close relationships. Friendship may mean feeling wanted and useful in their older years instead of alone and isolated.

According to different philosophical, psychological and socio-linguistic studies, non-verbal communication is a very important part of human’s interaction in general. Read works of Russian scientists Багдасаровой Н. А or Биркенбила В. Or read American psychologists Allan and Barbara Pizz about body language and what our partner’s body tells us.

To strengthen our point of view and to oppose our opponents I want to bring an example from one film – and you know, films are people’s opinion on some aspects of our life. That is a serials “Black Mirror”, season 2 the episode called “Be right back”. The idea is the following. A woman named Martha lost her boy-friend who died in a road accident. They live in the nearest future and everything what happens is almost possible now. She suffers of her lost which makes her hard to live. Her friend proposed her a service of a chatbot. The hetchman of her dead boyfreind is created according to his virtual activity in different social networks. Martha can talk to him on phone or in chat. She can hear his voice and his reactions are very similar to a real person’s. She seems to feel better but she gets distracted from the real world – her family, her friends. And one day that chat-bot offers Martha a new expensive but experimental service – to inject his virtual personality into an artificial flesh. It sounds great first! To get your virtual friend close to you now! But the problem is the following – it is just a henchman, a creature, unable to react on the spot, unable to argue your ideas and is ready to do everything what you want. Still sounds great? They sleep in one bed, but he is just a piece of artificially-made flesh, that can’t breathe or even doesn’t need to close eyes. Strange feeling, don’t you think so? But we are talking about non-verbal communication. This artificial man is unable to do it and when Martha was busy doing her work – he was just standing as a standing lamp, a sofa or any other piece of furniture – she didn’t feel the presence of an alive human. Is furniture your friend? Do you feel comfortable talking to a wardrobe or a fridge? Don’t you feel alone in flat with lots of furniture? The same about virtual friends. You know they are there somewhere on the Net, but you still feel lonely if they are silent and don’t answer your messages, you still don’t feel less uncomfortable and less lonely when your computer is switched off. But a real friend even sleeping on your sofa while you don’t makes you feel better and not the only one in a hostile world.

Thus making a conclusion we want just to point out that in spite of all those chances the Internet gives us in keeping in touch with people and finding new people, virtual friends can’t be real, because they are just there in your computer, in your social network. You can’t get a surprise by bumping into him/her outside, and even if you do, you won’t recognize him/her; you can’t get in touch with him her here and now because you need him/her – either there is no Internet access or your friend is off-line or he/she doesn’t reply your messages. All the things which make a friendship real can’t be applied to your virtual friends.