Question 1 wrote:What does friendship mean to you as it applies to the world of AMVs?
A lot. It's the main reason I'm still editing today. Well, more accurately, the main reason I'm still involved in the editing community.
Question 2 wrote:Who are your friends? If you're friendly with everybody, who are your best friends?
I'm friends with a lot of AMVers. It'd be safe to say that my CDVV studio-mates are my best friends, but I have several close AMVing friends who aren't (officially) part of the studio.
Otherwise I tend to be nice to everybody. While I'm very loyal to my friends, I am not a clique-ish person by nature and develop close friendships with specific people on individual terms, not with groups of them, nor because they're part of certain groups. I can and would like to be friends with more AMVers, as long as we can personally relate.
Question 3 wrote:We all change groups of friends throughout our lives, somewhat anyway. What other groups in the past have you been involved with?
I don't really have a lot of "ex-" things in my life. Most things I've liked and most friends I've had I'm still involved with to some degree. Hobby-wise, I'm not nearly as close to any other groups as I am to AMVers, but I still have a number of people in my other hobbies (like simulation games) that I'm on very good terms with. I did lose contact with a lot of my good childhood friends from back in the day, but that's not because of hobby and interest changes, but rather because my family immigrated and also moved around a lot.
Question 4 wrote:Do you think you would ever have come to be an editor without a community?
No. Absolutely not. Simple as that.
Question 5 wrote:Do you think you would like editing as much without a community?
See above. I would definitely not continue editing if it weren't for the community. In fact there were two points where I quietly could've faded away from the hobby, but friends pulled me back into it.
Question 6 wrote:What about with a community, but for some reason it was impossible to make friends?
See above. I would've made several AMVs, then quietly faded from the scene, because it was fairly specific friends that kept me involved with AMVing past 2005 or so.
Question 7 wrote:How important would editing be to you if every online community and all traces of one (save for your own memory) ceased to exist when you woke up tomorrow morning?
Not very. To be honest, editing isn't "very important" to me as it is - that is, I like it as a hobby and as a community, but it's never been the most important (nor even 2nd or 3rd most important) hobby for me. Without the community, it'd be an even lower priority for me.
Question 8 wrote:Have you ever met an editor in real life?
Yes.
8a wrote:If yes, describe your first experience doing so.
Depends on who and how you count I guess. Probably the first editors I've met would've been at some of the Toronto cons in 2003 or so. They were just regular people, spent a bit of time chatting. They didn't blow me away nor became great friends of mine or anything at the time.
The real "first time" for me was ACen 2009 when I first met a very large group of editors I already was friends with online, many of them for the first time. It was awesome. It was and still is a very special group of people for me, and I knew it within minutes of meeting them. Literally that moment when you suddenly know that yup, these people weren't just some online nerdy thing that'd never work in real life, but in fact were my absolute best friends ever.
8ab wrote:If more than once, describe your last experience doing so.
Yesterday Fall_Child42 showed up at my house and we worked on Anime North AMV programming, shared music and created some outsider installation art. It was pretty awesome.
Question 9 wrote:Is there anything else related to this subject you'd like to add?
a) there are a lot of awesome people in this community, who are awesome not just as editors but as people
b) cons are great. This has nothing to do with the cons (for me, anyway, I hardly care for the events themselves) and everything to do with people
c) unlike many other editors I know, I've never dated anyone whom I originally met via AMVs and the .org community. However it's (almost) surprising how many people I know who have done exactly that. Some of them are even married now.
Question 10 wrote:The person posting below you has no friends, whatsoever. Will you be his/her friend?
Yes. Like I said, I get along pretty well with most people one on one.
The Birds are using humanity in order to throw something terrifying at this green pig. And then what happens to us all later, that’s simply not important to them…