A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation amongst friends in the dark corner of a Chinatown Bar.
Of all things one could discuss on a Saturday night at 1a.m. we got to chatting about, well, chatting. Specifically, on voicemail, e-mail, IM, SMS, FB and Twitter.
Leave it to the nerds.
As biggest nerd ever, I thought more about this over the course of the next few days.
While the aforementioned mediums make it easier to communicate, while we participate we’re sacrificing the human experience and encouraging alienation from others.
My friends know that I generally dislike voicemail. It’s rare that I leave them and admittedly barely listen to them.
They’re like an awkwardly scripted one-way time capsule from the past. Why not leave the same message in real time – circa now?
In 1995 I signed up for my first email address. In the interest of self-disclosure for the sake of this story I (gulp) became semi-addicted to AOL chat rooms.
This was back in the day when we were all on dial-up – and paid for internet by the hour.
Like most people, I was beyond intrigued with the notion of chatting in real time with anyone from anywhere in the world. For a angst-ridden teenage girl growing up in the midwestern suburbs it was my portal.
Ironically enough, I quickly became friends with someone who happened to live nearby. We immediately bonded over our mutual obsession of music, media, the arts, and local underground parties (ok fine, “raves”).
There were no rules. We’d chat anytime of day or night when both of us happened to be online. There was no limit to the range of topics we’d discuss.
Over time, our lives became closer and he felt like a real friend.
One year we briefly met in person by total accident. We chatted for a few awkward moments until my friend pulled me away. “Who is that guy?” She asked.
She didn’t even have an e-mail address at that point so maybe she wouldn’t understand…or would she? I tried to explain.
“Ok, anyway…”, she replied. “Wanna get some frozen yogurt?”
When I moved away to college our friendship continued.
He’d give me feedback on various art projects and tips for acclimating to a newly vegan diet. I’d give him girl advice and let him know what I thought of his latest remix. We’d crack jokes, share URLs and pontificate the meaning of life years later as I procrastinated writing those 30 page papers in grad school.
He moved to Los Angeles, I moved to Boston.
We became friends on MySpace, then Friendster, then Facebook.
I moved to Los Angeles.
We slowly became friends In Real Life. Bonded by our mutual common interests, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion chatting with him poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel or under the skylights at LA hotspot Bardot.
My male companions give him the hairy eye wondering who the dude is I’m chatting conspiratorially alongside.
15 years later, we still communicate on IM. Now, we also communicate via SMS and e-mail too.
And sometimes, we’ll even drop the other a Voicemail.
Are our lives intertwined? Somewhat.
Will we ever connect on a deep and meaningful level? Probably not.
As part of different spheres, our interests overlap on a social level only.
Yet for someone I’ve hung out with for maybe an hour total in person, he probably knows more about me than anyone.
Communicating on IM can build a form of friendship. We’re missing the part that hanging in person brings – the adventures, atmosphere, lingering conversations, observations, body language. These things bring meaning to a surface-level friendship and make it come alive.
Can a real friendship be fostered online then, when all we have is type?
Leave your comments by clicking on “comments” at the top of this post.
‘Will we ever connect on a deep and meaningful level? Probably not.’
So interesting how one needs to communicate in person to feel as though she’s connected on a deep level. It sounds as though you *have* connected on a deep level already. In the same ways that pen pals can connect with thousands of miles between them. Even if the offline meetings don’t carry the same feeling of gusto as the chatroom ones doesn’t necessarily discount the authenticity of your online connection.
“Yet for someone I’ve hung out with for maybe an hour total in person, he probably knows more about me than anyone.”
Wow, that is sad. You must either be very lonely or very shallow or very unapproachable. Or maybe you like it that way. You have only yourself to thank for this. Maybe Santa will bring you a boy (or girl) to stuff in your stocking. Or maybe a lump of coal to match you. But don’t despair, and from the snooty yuppie drivel here you seem not to be; because with a lotta pressure, coal can become a diamond. Shine on you, whoever you are.
Jessie, that’s a great point. How different is chatting online from, say, writing letters? Chatting online fosters a conversation as it’s two-way and in real time. It creates an authentic connection whose authenticity may not be necessarily questioned when compared to an in-real-life scenario – because each are different. I wonder how this affects the aspects of what we consider a “relationship” then and on what level.
Hi Skip, thanks for writing. Sure, that was a pretty loaded statement for me to make.
I think, over the years of traveling from my parents house to living in 5 different cities over the next 10 years, his friendship stayed with me all that time.
This leads me to believe that my online friend caught a lot of the casual minutiae I experienced during that period.
Sure, there were times that I was lonely. I was a student and on the computer way too much – working, writing, or just goofing off.
There were also times – like now – when I’m not lonely at all.
Thanks for the feedback. While I try not to sound like “snooty yuppie drivel” and create a place for social discourse here, it’s good to hear feedback on the tonality I’m presenting.
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