Well, I've always found it ridiculously hard and exhausting to make and specially to maintain friendships, but by nature I'm actually a very talkative person, so I have the constant need for it. I haven't had a single real friend I've been able to maintain for a long time, and I can't really be myself with them. Online friendships have made it easier for me to find people that share similar interests or at least listen to what I want to say, and I like how we can keep things a little "distant", even though I've told them things I haven't told anyone else. That sometimes makes me worry about the authenticity of my relationship with them, but I know we do care about each other and that's good enough for me. The bad part is that I can't hang out with them in real life though, at the moment I have no social life so if I want to go out (because I do like going out) I have to do it just myself, and while I do have fun it would be better with some company. That's kind of the only downside of online friends in comparison to "real" ones, so I choose online friends. That's just my experience though.