"Dad, take me to Coalville..."

Knowing that Coalville is a run down, ex-mining town, I know that these words aren't said very often, but these must be similar to the words that my Brother's online friend "Squatron" recently said to his own father.

As I type, playing poker with my Bro and three of his "real life" friends is Squatron aka Tom. His Dad gave him a lift here two days ago from Grimsby because he wanted to meet up with and hang out with one of his best online friends - my brother.

Despite the fact I've ran a few LAN Parties in my time and gone to plenty of clubbing message board "Meets", I still found this quite surprising. It's different to a LAN or even a Clan meet up because it's just one person hanging out with another. There is no safety net. If they hadn't had got on in real life. We'd be stuck with Tom! But they did.

In fact, they are quite obviously best mates! My best mates date back to Primary School and are people I've known for years and met through the "real life" community not the "online" community.

My brother plays on Halo 2 online a lot and always plays with Tom but I never would of expected this one on one meet up to occur. What amazes me the most about all this is that without Xbox Live these two friends would of never had met up.

Surely, Microsoft can be happy that their online service, which intends to bring together a community of gamers has achieved such a triumph in social interaction. Xbox Live is very slowly showing the world that not all gamers are lonely, social retards but are as friendly and as sociable as the next person.

It's also increasingly true that traditional Communities are ceasing to exist and are being replaced by Online Communities. More people than ever are finding Love online because they can find people that share similar opinions and interests, people are making more friends and are prepared to travel much further to see them.

I think it's a nice testament to the human spirit that we all haven't become lonely, socially retarded creatures who hide away from society and only experience life through their computers as some believed we would.

In fact, the Internet and Online Gaming has only lead to us expanding our experiences in the world by putting us into contact with people we never would of before.

Plus, it's quite worrying to think that if now a father is willing to drive their Son from Grimsby to Coalville, when I've got kids, will they be asking me to fly them to Ibiza?