"Imaginary" Friends?

I've had the opportunity over the past month or so to meet a number of my "internet friends". In every case I have been delighted with how the meetings went, and happy to find that I like these people as well in person as I do online. A side benefit was that meeting them kind of "legitimized" them in my mind as friends. Instead of people I'd met online but had never met, which sometimes seemed a bit like "imaginary" friends, now they were people I'd met and who I just don't get to see very often. And since that is true of my regular friends, too, I feel more justified than ever in keeping up with all of them.