It's strange to remember how arbitrarily I met most of the people I know on LJ, and how chancey it was, how easily I could have never met them. Some of them made sense (such as friends-of-friends or similar LJ communities -- I met miyu_sakura and newedition through Objectivism communities for instance) but others are just totally random and arbitrary.

I think I met wynand because of his strange comments in ishalltriumph's LJ. Now we've made a game together and are working on another and have met each other in a few of his writing group meetings. But why did I even notice his comments there? Maybe it was his strange avatar, which was a picture of him with a turtleneck like shirt pulled up over most of his face, just under his eyes, which made me check out his LJ.

harlockhero and I, years ago, were using the "view random livejournal" button in search of anyone who wasn't boring, and one of the ones we came across was ubermensch. Eventually we'd have hundreds of IM discussions and go to a Skinny Puppy concert, and he let me use his book Raberata (which he sent me a free copy of) for the background universe/setting for one of my games. Yet it was all through a random number generator.

Strangest are those that I don't remember how I met. I don't remember how I found womanonfire's LJ at all for instance.

And even outside of LJ, a lot of my best online friends I met through the Ohrrpgce game engine community, between 1998 and 2002. But I could easily have chosen some other game engine (perhaps the horrible RPG Maker, or whatever) instead, and would have a completely different set of long-term friends. It'd be strange never having met komera or harlockhero or konami or moogle1 or jsangspar or orchard_l or longetech or charbile or fyrewulff or arque or dgowers or eternalhachi or novakaiser or specplosive, considering how much of my experience is related to doing things with them and talking to them.