RIP Modo -- A Friend I Never Met

I love my volunteer position as a Moderator at one of the more influential online Bicycle Forums on the internet, BikeForums. It's a huge, busy, vibrant community of cyclists of all varieties. Usually there are around 1500 people logged in to the site at any given time.

I've discovered during my 3 year membership there, and my 3 short months as a Mod, that friendships created there are very real. Although we rarely meet each other face to face, the other people that post and discuss issues and tell stories are real people. The friendships that are created are just as real as most friendships in the "real" world.

Modo's Profile Picture at BikeForums

In August of 2011, at 308 pounds, is when I joined. Of course, the story of my weight loss since then is multi-faceted - but my friends in one of the sub-forums there helped quite a bit during my weight loss. Cajoling, encouraging, keeping me accountable (and me keeping them accountable) helped me lose 78 pounds in 16 months. We looked at each other using before-and-after pictures etc. and the friendships were solid.

After becoming a Moderator at the site, my view of the forums expanded considerably. And with that expansion came many more friendships. A number of people I met at BikeForums have become friends of mine on Facebook also.  It is very interesting to get to know these people from all over the world.

For the past two months, I have gotten to know a member there that went by the screen-name ModoVincere. He was a great person, who had forged a number of close friendships in the forums. In the decade he was a member, many people grew to respect him. My short two months jabbering with him built a bit of a friendship, although he and I were not as close as he and others. Today, his daughter used his account to log in to the forums and report that he had experienced a heart attack while riding on a stationary bicycle, and passed away. She said that he loved the forums, and the people in the forums, and spoke about them all the time. He was only 47 at the time of his death.

What was interesting is that the sense of loss I felt when hearing about Modo's passing was quite real. Even though our acquaintance was internet-only, he was a real person with which I had real interaction.

What an interesting world we live in. Since I'm older now, it would be easy to criticize internet "friendships" as not real, or with little depth. It would be easy to say that it would be better to concentrate on our families, and local "real" friends, than the ones we have never seen on internet forums or social sites. Then why did it feel like I got punched in the gut when I heard of ModoVincere's passing?

RIP my friend . . .