By Liana Yadav

Disclaimer: This story is purely fictional, much like your Friday night plans.

Friendship is hard to come by. It takes time for love and care to foster and turn into a bond that holds two people together. Research suggests that it takes 50-200 hours of quality time to move from becoming a casual acquaintance to a genuine friend.

Unless you’re at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), where all you need is unrestricted internet access, slim self-esteem and four hours a day spent questioning your life choices as a train hauls you to and from places in Ontario you definitely do not want to be in. Students all over campus are typing away passionately on their screens, their thumbs twiddling as each tap uncovers the promise of a great friendship. A friendship for the books, the kind they make movies about, the kind that their children will hear of. 

You know, the kind that begins on Reddit.

Those are the expectations with which students enter the subreddit r/TorontoMetU. To learn more about this unconventional method, The Eyeopener reached out to a student who authored such a post themself. Historians will likely look at this as the most accurate description of modern communication:

“Im 21m in btm nd ive no friends even tho I never leave my room or go2 any class or tell anyone my name. Why does this keep happening to me my life sux does anyone want to be friends?”

Upon further contact with the account u/lonerstoner41, he confirmed his identiy as third-year business technology management student, Rhett Cluse. When asked about the kind of people he met through his post, Cluse said the only meaningful conversation he had was with a first-year student under the account name
u/devodweller69.. .

“Everything about him seemed legit, until he said that he had always wanted to meet a real BTM boy and that he couldn’t wait to shake my hand until his skin and mine became one,” Cluse said. “He also kept going on and on about his pet homunculus and I wasn’t really sure what that was.”

Cluse shared a snippet of the full conversation that had taken place over Reddit: 

CLUSE: So what brings you to r/TorontoMetU?

devodweller69: The same as you, my new best friend, to find my best friend. And methinks I seem to have succeeded! I promise I am a good time, we can hang out in my gooning cavern!

CLUSE: Right…

devodweller69: We’re going to meld into one person and then all of our belongings will become both of our belongings.

Following the troubling exchanges between the two, Cluse chose to speak to the head of relationship studies at the department of psychology Medulla Oblongata about what was going wrong.

“Social anxiety has increased ten-fold in the last few years. Not at TMU though, here everyone seems to be in the chokehold of stupid anxiety. It’s the kind of stupidity that makes you anxious…or the kind of anxiety that makes you stupid, it’s really up to you,” said Oblongata.

When asked if there are any technical differences between the two, she added, “To me, the more anxiety the better. I love reading these posts on Reddit. Sure, I have to teach in the Kerr Hall basement like a gremlin everyday but at least I am not 21m looking for BTM friends on Reddit, you know?”

*Following our interview with Rhett Cluse he mysteriously disappeared