Can Friendships be made with 1's and 0's?

Can one truly establish a "friendship" online?  What constitutes "friendship"?  How important is physical presence to sustain a friendship?

I recall the long-term friendship of Julia Child and Avis de Voto as mentioned in the movie "Julie & Julia." That friendship started as a two-year correspondence, long-hand snail mail!  And the way Julia talked about her, you'd think they were bff from childhood!

In this age, we can have 1,000 facebook "friends", hundreds of twitter "followers", etc., etc.  A lot of them, I imagine, we have never met personally. Yet for some of them, we can actually interact on a daily basis!  Much much more frequently than our real friends and family!  We react to each other's highs and lows, with an assumed genuine concern and interest.  We greet each other birthdays and share memes.  

Can true friendships come out of these?   If such interactions never get past the electronic level, can we call them true friendships?

What do you think?

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