How Two Internet Nemeses Became Friends
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with two former online adversaries who became friends. They met arguing in the comment section of a Facebook forum dedicated to promoting science, where each thought the other was misguided. When they started chatting privately, and eventually met up in person, they found more common ground than they expected. They discuss how they’ve shifted each other’s thinking and how they’ve built a friendship based on debate and—sometimes—agreeing to disagree.
The Friends:
Colleen Diessner, 40, a stormwater-management worker who lives in Seattle
Drey Pavlov, 39, a physician who lives in Seattle
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Julie Beck: Tell me how you first encountered each other.
Drey Pavlov: I used to be very active on various online forums. I got into Reddit, Facebook. If you know that XKCD comic where there’s the guy on the computer and his wife is saying, “Honey, come to bed,” and he says, “But somebody’s wrong on the internet”—that was me.
People believe obviously wrong things, and I couldn’t understand why. I was seeing a lot of bad science and a lot of bullshit pretending to be science, and I was fighting against that.
By the time Colleen and
