While social platforms like Instagram and TikTok seem to rule the internet, some prefer quieter sites.
"I get very burnt out from social media a lot," 19-year-old Lauren told Mashable. Lauren prefers to chat with her long-distance boyfriend, Charlie, on Discord, but they met on another non-major social site: Quotev.
Quotev, formerly Quizazz, is a quiz-making and fan fiction website aimed at teens. Lauren and Charlie met there nearly five years ago, when they were both 15, and they've been together ever since.
Bonding over a passion for writing
Lauren and Charlie's relationship started when she noticed his writing on Quotev.
"This was before I even knew I wanted to go into journalism," said Lauren, who's since published work in publications like The Nation and Teen Vogue. "I was still very impressed with his writing. I was like, 'I need to keep in touch with this person. Like, this person is really cool. I want to be this person's friend,'" and that's how it started.
They chatted on Quotev for a while (the site used to have more social functions that no longer exist), but eventually moved to Discord and texting as they built more trust. Now, they talk every day for hours about school, their lives, and their fandoms — even though their interests don't always align.
"We do both love writing, and we both focus on that," she said. She discovered she wanted to go into journalism when she was 16. "We obviously have that to kind of bond us together."
"We talk every day for hours so we share a certain type of mundaneness," she said, "which is really nice. And I kind of prefer that over the interests part of it."
Lauren didn't tell her parents about Charlie due to the nature of how they met.
"We met really young, and when you're really young, you can't exactly come up to your parents and be like, 'Hey, I found this guy online that I'm dating now,' because there's a lot of safety concerns in that," she said. The concerns are valid and should be considered, Lauren said, but when she was 15, she wasn't thinking about that.
Lauren still hasn't told her parents about the relationship, however, because they're both queer and trans. Lauren uses both she and they pronouns.
"I'm very open about it anywhere else," like the internet, "but, yeah, it's still a bridge that I have to cross, that I will have to," Lauren said.
That's also part of the reason Lauren and Charlie haven't met in person yet. They both live in the American South, but because of circumstances, they haven't taken their relationship offline.
That's going to change this year, however.
Meeting in person for the first time
"We do have plans to meet this year," Lauren said. She's graduating from community college in May, and Charlie plans to attend the ceremony. Once Lauren transfers to a four-year college, they will look into moving in together as she'll be living off-campus.
"Hopefully, exciting things will be happening," she said.
While she's excited to finally meet Charlie in person, she's also nervous because he's a secret from her parents.
"I will need to figure out some sort of solution," Lauren said. She said she could lie and say Charlie is just a friend, but lying all this time has been exhausting.
"I've always hidden this anyway, so it's not just the five years," she said. "Hiding my queerness has been a lifelong thing for me that I'm getting very frustrated and tired of doing, but at the same time, that fear is just still so high."
This is, unfortunately, not entirely uncommon. According to research gathered by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth advocacy organization, one-third of LGBTQ young people face parental rejection, while another one-third don't come out until they're adults.
"The truth will come out eventually, but I don't know how I feel about that," Lauren said.
Lauren also calls the prospect of meeting Charlie surreal, as they've been together but apart for so long. "We are so used to being online and so we both always wanted to be together in person, but it's just like we're so close now, after talking about this since forever," she said.
While some might gawk at an online-only relationship, Lauren feels very lucky to have met her boyfriend.
"Being almost 20 years old, people will see a relationship like mine, almost five years entirely online, high school sweethearts, something like that, and they'll kind of be like, 'Um, how did you do this?'" she said.
But she doesn't regret meeting Charlie on Quotev. "Even though we haven't met in person, it's very hard, if anything happened to us, would I try to find someone else online? No, I wouldn't. But that doesn't mean that I regret how things are now. I just hope for a future where we're together in person, and we're still comfortable."
