Eunish Shrestha

8/18/2019
Final Draft
My First Online Friend

I had just arrived at my apartment from an exhausting day, and I just wanted to rest by

playing games. I turned on my three year old HP laptop, and I instantly received a message on

steam. It was from Jeff, an online friend I had never met in real life. All I knew about him was

that he is a single Philipino man who is around thirty year old, and he worked as an engineer in

Canada. His message read, “u playing?”

I replied back, “Yeah 2 min.” The two of us talked informally despite our age gap, and

we would rarely type the full word. Instead we just typed “u” for you and “min” for minutes. I

launched Dota 2 (an online multiplayer MOBA game that I played with my family and friends).

In Dota there are 5 players on both teams, and they each select a different and unique hero. Then

they go into the 3 lane or jungle depending on who you picked. The roles are mid carry, safe

carry, off carry, hard support and roaming support. The goal is to destroy the enemy ancient.

Each ancient is protected by multiple tower and several units that spawn every 30 second. The

carries kill the creeps for money, buy items, and kill enemy heroes. Then they destroy the towers

and end the game. While the support protect the carries with everything they have, and create

space by keeping the enemy away so carries can farm safely.

Then I joined his party to start finding a match. Then we started to talk about the

immortal items (cosmetics) from the Dota 2 Battle pass (BP is an add on). Jeff said, “I am going

to buy the bp and use some extra money to reach level 1000 in order to get all of the immortals

and the aegis.”

I replied, “Lucky! I wish I had a bp, but I am not allowed to spend money on games. I

really want th-” We had found a match after five minutes of waiting. After discussing for 2
minutes we agree with our team to let me and he played on the same lane. I decided to support

while Jeff plays the core (the ace of the team). We had a bad start, but we made our comeback

once Jeff made money and became the strongest in the game. Our entire team went to end the

game with Jeff leading the charge. We ended up winning and after the game, Jeff said he put our

teammate on list of players to never play with. “You can do that? How?” I asked.

He says, “If u have a bp u cam put people that u don’t want to play with in a list.”

I replied, “I wish I could do that I play with the most toxic people all the time.” Then I

received 5 gifts from Jeff. I asked, “What is it?”

“Some extra immortals and a surprize,” he says. I open the gifts one by one. I received

the spectra immortal, 3 other immortals, and the bp. I didn’t know how to react. Why would he

buy me a bp when he doesn't even know me. “Do u like the gift?” he asked.

“Of course. Thank you sooooooo much!!!! But u didn’t have to buy it for me. I mean it is

ur money, should have used it to buy those levels.” I said.

“Nah its fine that would only get me like 20 levels anyway.” said Jeff. I thanked him

again then we started another match. This was a troll match where no one played to win and

messed around with bp exclusive cosmetics. Then Jeff taught me how to use the bp exclusive

cosmetics. For example we spawned balloons to play pass with the other team, a drum that we

could hit to make a beat, monkeys that would throw mud at the enemy, and finally we dug for

treasure using the shovel. Using the shovel ended up becoming a competition. Every time Jeff

found something useful (complete luck) , he would just start screaming, “LETS GOOOOOO!!!”

In the end, Jeff was the luckiest as he found dozens of good items. While I mostly found troll

items.

Then I had to go to bed so I said, “cya lets play again tomorrow morning?”
 “Yah,” Jeff responds. Since then I have played every morning with Jeff the entire

summer break, as he became one of my favorite friends. This made me realize that not all online

friends are fake, some can be kind and very special for you like Jeff is for me. I look forward to

meeting Jeff in the future as we promised if I go to Canada or if he comes to California we will

meet each other.