Title: How chicken wings created my tightest social circle and gave me my best friends
Date: January 30, 2020
Original Source: National Post
Synopsis: In my latest piece for National Post, I wrote about the sacredness of Wing Nights and adult/online friendships.
By nature of my job as a sports reporter, I have spent a great deal of time on Twitter over the last decade. That brings with it many challenges. However, used the right way, social media can be a powerful tool for community building. In the words of rock band Joyce Manor, I’ve developed many friends that I met online.
While some remain online-only friends — the logical extension of teenage years spent building a network of file-sharing and instant-messaging pen pals — others have become a built-in network of welcomers and tour-guides for whom I’ve been especially grateful when my job requires travel. Others, still, have become good, regular, in-real-life friends, further bonded by our mutual awkwardness whenever the question “How do you guys know each other?” comes up.
Yet, even amongst this subset, there is a further grouping that exists closer to my core. It is a special class of friends I wouldn’t have believed could emerge from online friendship: Wing Night friends.
Continue reading at National Post.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 