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Touching viral video shows online gamer showing up to surprise his friend in real life

Touching viral video shows online gamer showing up to surprise his friend in real life

A viral TikTok video proves that online friendships can be real friendships.

Since the introduction of online gaming and social media, much has been made about the importance of real-life interaction. While the hand-wringing over young people losing valuable social skills isn't entirely unwarranted, there can be a tendency for some to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While excessive gaming is associated with less sociability, there are social positives for many in the gaming world.

Real friendships can be—and frequently are—made through gaming. In fact, relationships forged through online gaming were a lifeline for many people during pandemic isolation periods. My 76-year-old mother plays World of Warcraft and has a group of friends she's played with for years. They know about one another's jobs and families and support each other in their real lives in addition to their gaming lives. I've seen how much these friendships play a role in her life and it's very sweet.

A video of a surprise gaming friend meet-up perfectly exemplifies how real these relationships can be.


TikTok user @lunaanddiogi shared the video with captions that told the story.

"My boyfriend has had an online gaming friend for over 10 years he has never met," she wrote. "At first I thought it was super weird. Then I got to know him over FaceTime."

"He ended up being super cool so we planned a surprise weekend," she continued. "He lives four hours away."

As the captions appear, we see the boyfriend lying on the couch when there's a knock at the door. "Someone's here," says the girlfriend. He sits up as she goes to the door and opens it.

"I heard you're having a bad day," said the gaming friend, as the boyfriend rose from the sofa in disbelief.

The joy. The hug. The tears. It's just the best.

Watch:

@lunaanddiogi

Besties #gamingontiktok #gamingfriends #callofduty #90dayfiance #bestfriends #imjustthinkingwithmyd #fyp #euphoria @Parker Hann

People loved the men's reactions to meeting in person and how happy they were to be together.

"Brings good tears to my eyes," wrote one commenter.

"I can confirm this is so cool and I’ve done the same except I flew from UK to LA to meet my friend was a BLAST for an experience," wrote another.

"This is everything honestly," wrote another. "Don't let anyone tell you that your online friends aren't real friends."

At least one commenter shared that they met their husband through gaming. (My mom shared that marriages have happened in her gaming community as well.)

Online friendships might be new in the course of human history, but like pen pals before, people can form real connections with one another long-distance through the internet. Meeting people via the internet has to be done safely, of course, but human relationships don't have to be limited by time and place. The bottom line is, when you find your people, geography is just a minor detail.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

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There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

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When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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