I have made the most important friendship of my life online. Not just a friendship of course but a partnership I never want to imagine being without.
Of course it can work. People make the mistake of biasing their opinion based on personal experience. There are untold thousands of people that have met online and become fantastic friends. Is everyone genuine? Hell no, but how is that different to real life? I agree that you cannot truly know someone through text conversation alone, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology you can speak to, and even video call with these people via the internet and become closer than I could have previously imagined possible. There is no debate here. It is a proven fact that it can and does work all over the world, right now.
:)