I'm very fortunate that my best friend lives very close by and we get together 3 or 4 times/week. We actually got to know each other from an online forum we both were active in for years. We're very unlikely friends - there's 20+ years difference in our ages and I'm very staid and conservative in my appearance and she's very much not. But we're closer to each other than either of us ever have been to anyone else. She's very good for me - she's saved me from the dark place more often than she knows.

Come to think of it, most of my friends came from online forums originally. Now, we get together so often, we don't really even think about how we met. So, when I talk to them online, it doesn't feel like the usual kind of disembodied connection I often feel with online people I've never met.