Would you trust someone on the internet? With the way things are on the World Wide Web right now, I wouldn’t blame you if you said no. AI, ragebait and scams have made the internet unenjoyable. But for me, I took a leap of faith and trusted strangers on the internet.
The year was 2016, I was 14. My walls were turquoise: the chipped sides of them were covered with band posters, ripped off from Kerrang! Magazines and Alternative Press. The JOOX music app was playing “Summertime” by My Chemical Romance, and an ad showed up after every three songs, reminding me that nothing was free. I wasn’t free, either, from judgment and bullying.
Kids at school looked at me weird. They called me names, picked apart my appearance and obviously, in true bully fashion: cornered me in the hallway. It was traumatizing, because I didn’t do anything wrong, I simply existed with my school’s standardized hijab and a Sanrio notebook full of band stickers.
So if the world was cruel with me, where did I go? To the internet. I met strangers on a messaging app popular in Asian countries called LINE, created a group to share my love for My Chemical Romance with another girl that turned out to be my partner in crime, Jauza.
Throughout our friendship, I knew it was different than having friends from school: seeing them in the canteen or sharing seats, trying to solve an Arabic riddle from my Quran teacher — these strangers were experiencing the same thing as me, just scattered across different sides of the city. They were looking for a space to be weird.
So we became weird together. As cliché as it sounded, we were just girls. When I first met them in person, it felt unreal. We planned the meet up after our national exam to celebrate passing middle school, not knowing that was first of many. What started as just a group chat sharing their love for pre-teen depressing emo music turned into sleepovers and endless shots of cheap red wine. Out of 14 of us, eight of us ended up in the same college. Can you believe that?
Who knew the strangers on my phone would end up changing my life? This year, our group, Bahari, hit our 10-year anniversary.
“You used to talk to these people through the internet,” Alyyahumaira Ferisa, one of my best friends, said. “The first few times I met you guys, it’s kind of mind boggling because I didn’t have that much of a big friend group when I was younger.”
I have gotten weird stares too, when I was laughing alone after Ferisa sent a meme in the group chat. Some of my high school friends thought I was delirious, making up people inside my head. They didn’t think my internet friends were real. I could still hear it in the back of my head, the whispers and laughs. “Ainsha’s always in their own world, I don’t even think his friends are real!”
But they were real. My high school friends wouldn’t understand the excitement when we first saw each other, the rush of running to them — embracing for a big hug in public. It felt real to me when we were cramped inside a small karaoke room, ears ringing from our laughter and us singing out of tune.
When it came to my favorite memory with them, it was the silent moments: when we were all together, in my room with the busted AC unit barely blowing cool air, which happened quite often. It was the silent reassurance that we had. I think being friends for this long, especially with someone who wasn’t good with emotions, made “I love you” and “You mean a lot to me” rare.
We would often ask each other, if we could imagine our lives without each other: and the answer would always be no. Thinking about it made me physically shiver. How would it be if I hadn’t met them? Would I still be here, writing my draft 9,000 miles away from them? Would I have a different set of friends? Would I still be alive? Ten years was a long time. You could start a family, get a degree, be promoted at your job, start a company or even change the world.
I’ve built my life around these people, trusting them with my entire life. People come and go, but Bahari? They stayed with me through tough times and hangovers, they were always there: one call away or a 30-minute train ride, either way, I would take both if I could.
“You guys know more things than my own parents,” Dio Aurelia, one for my best friends, said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s how big my level of trust is with Bahari,” Aurelia said.
Growing up as a queer kid, Aurelia had no expectations for the group to be a safe space. In Indonesia, being queer is … a rather taboo topic. He wasn’t expecting us to be accepting, just thinking it was another group chat without having actual attachment to us at first. Aurelia prioritized being himself over being accepted.
But later for him, Bahari became a safe space, after knowing we were just like him. “I would not trade it for anything,” he said. And I jokingly asked: “Would you trade it for 2 million dollars?” Aurelia immediately said, “Yes.” That was not surprising at all, knowing we could joke around each other — fast enough to even notice that it was a joke, the chemistry was always there.
It was so different 10 years ago. The internet isn’t always kind, I know that.
But it was kind to me. It gave me 13 best friends that I could count on, despite our different time zones after I moved away. It gave me home. Friendship isn’t always going out and being there physically for each other, friendship can be unconventional. It can be over a 15-hour Zoom call or a watch party for Zoolander, and it can be online. Making the effort to turn unconventional into something deeper takes time, you won’t immediately find your safe haven. It took time for me to find my friends, but it was all worth it.
“It’s like a place I can go home with, like, you are beyond what that safe space means,” Calistha Putri, one of my best friends, said. “Being there for my friends is really not just for them, but also for me.” Looking back from being 14-year-olds with no internet supervision to grown adults, some working corporate and some doing their masters like me, it is a bit unbelievable that we’ve gotten this far.
To 14-year-old me with her turquoise walls and band posters: you just changed lives. I am not taking all the credit for that, though. I hope you know that. I hope you are ready to be bound for life with the strangers you are talking to right now. I hope you know they are your home. They will change your life too, you are more than just a stranger to them.
And to Asha, Alyn, Andiny, Ari, Calistha, Dean, Dio, Moza, Farah, Jauza, Nathan, Alyya and Fati — thank you for being a part of my life. I hope I made your lives happier, like you did for me. Here’s to another 10, to getting older together and to more sleepovers with my broken AC unit. I wouldn’t trade you guys for anything, or maybe I would, for 2 million dollars.
Header Image by Ainsha Milande
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