POSTS
Internet Friends
The ability to make friendships through your passions is the best super power that the internet gives us.
The best things that happened in my life happened through communities on the internet.
Here’s a story of all the places I hanged out on the internet and made friends from.
Until the first year of high school I’ve been offline.
My experience until then with the internet was running a Blogspot to sell snacks in middle school (with someone who’s still one of my best friends) and having a messenger account on my dad’s computer.
Everything changed in my first year of high school, when I discovered the internet (and porn) through my dad’s iPad.
Kingdoms at war
I started playing an online game called kingdoms at war. And through it I started chatting with strangers on the internet, my clan!
XDA Forum
In the first year of high school I got a Motorola phone with an outdated version of Android. This made me find XDA Forum and learn how to root my device.
Through the forum I got in touch with an indian developer that was building the modded firmware and started talking with him.
I also found some other italians with my same phone so I started a group chat with them.
Italian EDM Facebook
Second year of high school I got interested in EDM music. I got my first computer too.
I got into Facebook and as no one liked my posts I started adding to my friends Italian DJs making EDM. I became close with Federico a friend of my older cousin, that lived in Luxembourg and produced music.
Through Federico I started chatting with Andrea a Sicilian hacker and fellow EDM fan.
After one week that we knew each other online I told him that I wanted to be in the music business. I also told him I was shit at both making music and designing artworks so there wasn’t an obvious space for me.
Andrea told me that people that don’t know how to do anything become journalists.
Andrea then bought edmnews.it so that we could start a wordpress blog on it. We agreed that he would buy the server and set it up, and that we’d be a 50/50 partnership writing together.
He also created an email for me: ferruccio@edmnews.it
At the time an email with a custom domain was enough to make any teen sound legitimate to major labels, festivals and artists.
I made hundreds internet friends through that blog, and met Davide in real life.
He was the first internet friend that I met IRL
After a year of EDM I started to grow out of it. Started listening to techno music and other stuff.
Puberty and facebook likes gave me a boost in self confidence. So my energies moved to dating.
I still kept meeting up friends from the EDM Facebook groups though.
For example when I got my first job selling Ice Cream in London one of my only friends there was Tommaso, a guy I met from an Italian EDM group.
Fast forward to my first year of college I learned how to code. I started running an Instagram bot for an Italian personal growth blog of my own. Once I reached 10-15k instagram followers I started meeting other people that were trying to find growth hacks.
Through instagram influencer comment exchange groups I met Riccardo who at the time was also starting a blog.
My personal Blog
Until this point most of the things I had published on the internet were in Italian.
I created a Medium profile and started writing 250 words a day in english.
Then I bought the ferrucc.io domain and started owning my digital presence.
The initial version of the blog had a /now page that sent me most of my traffic. With just that I managed to start receiving emails and making friends with some interesting people (like DK).
Quora
Around a year after this I stopped using Instagram and started a Quora profile with the goal of reaching 365k views in less than a year. Through answering questions I started meeting people in other communities.
The weirdest one became my mentor. My internet grandpa was an 80 year old entrepreneur. Grandpa was a bit of an anarchist Hugh Hefner. We bonded over despising governments and taxes.
Because of the crypto craze I got into Twitter. After spending some time leeching I started posting things to make some friends.
After 6 months or so I started following and interacting with everyone that had a side project. Over a year or so I started meeting more and more people.
I even started doing some freelance gigs for twitter friends on the other side of the globe.
Then I decided to organize a dinner with every maker I could find in Milan. And that’s how I met a group of 5-6 friends that I still talk to!
Through these dinners I also met Simone, and that’s how my Al.ta Cucina adventure started.
Most of my closest friends now come from Twitter.
Anytime I go to a city I tweet it out and get to meet people that like me and have similar interests.
Makerlog & Product Hunt
As soon as I got involved with the maker community I started making my own small products too.
I first interacted with Anne-Laure because we were launching a product on the same day.
I connected with around a hundred people through these sites, mostly in Twitter DMs and Telegram chats.
Pioneer
Another internet community that made me meet some interesting people is Pioneer.
Through Pioneer I met ambitious people around my age tying to change the world!
If I wasn’t starting a company I’d want to join the Atmos team that I first met through Pioneer.
I think the person I met from Pioneer that I talk the most with is Nathan
Ambitious
This was a short lived community on Discord.
The great thing it had was weekly conversations with some of the most inspiring people in tech. The idea was that every week a different guest got on a call with the community.
The guests on these calls ranged from Erik Torenberg, Alan Kay to Tyler Cowen.
Looking back the “podcast” that had the biggest impact on me was the one with Riva Tez. She has a viral energy, optimism and knows how to play!
Interintellect
Interintellect is a community ran by Anna Gat.
Everyone in it is curious and likes to read books and make friends.
I’ve never been in the Salons they organise. I had some great 1 on 1 conversations with people from their Slack community.
Hopefully when Covid is over I’ll be able to organise attend an IRL Salon
Clubhouse
Clubhouse is great because of the mindset most people have while hopping into a room.
Everyone is very accessible and friendly on it, so it’s great! I haven’t been on it for long though and haven’t made any long term friends on it yet.
What’s next?
If you think I’m a nice human, I’d love to get to know you!
I just moved to Paris 🇫🇷 and I’d be happy to meet up with you and chat if you’re here!
If you can think about someone I’d get along with feel free to introduce me to them!
Easiest way to get in touch with me is DMing on Twitter or emailing hi @ this domain