Alice in Social Media Land
Taking a mental break from my incredibly mundane life of domestic floundering, I was thinking about how social media sometimes allows us to be on the same platform without actually connecting. It's this technological barrier, like operating with a robotic arm. It can be liberating, or it can be isolating. You can choose to reach out, or you can choose to shut yourself in. You can be whatever you choose to project, an identity that may or may not reflect any part of the "real life" you.
I suppose you can do that in real life, too, but we humans have evolved to be able to read facial expressions and decode the emotional layer of nonverbal communication, and that layer, with the exception of real-time video chat, frequently gets lost in online interactions. And it's a lot harder to pass for say, a teenage girl when you're a middle-aged man off-screen. I don't think that matters, tbh, in most cases of fandom interactions. Nevertheless, online interactions can feel a little more...indirect, more removed, more concealed. I mean, someone could be a crying mess and projecting absolute calm online, and, well, in real life there'd be tell-tale signs that might expose their charade, but online, it could feel like you're prying to even ask.
Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. A sort of frustration with the fact that increasingly, our social interactions are moving online, and there's this built-in obstacle in replicating authentic relationships and interactions. On the subway everyone's eyes are glued to a little 2"x5" screen in their hands, furiously typing or scrolling. Do people have missed connections anymore (and I don't mean dropped phone calls)?
In a way, social media is a misnomer. It's the thing we're on when we're not out having fun with friends or catching up with family or getting a refreshment at the local cafe or even cooking up a meal for one or curling up with a book. It's something we do when we're not doing anything else. (And now I've managed to make you feel bad. Sorry!) When I started thinking about this last night, and struggling to express this, the thing that came to mind immediately was Alice in Wonderland, specifically the following exchange, altered to fit my own feeling (and originally posted on Tumblr):
BTW, I love all of you, and this is in no way a commentary on my own experience on LJ, which has been just wonderful. But I have this Luddite mistrust of technology that I just FEEL like something is not transmitting across the wire, if that makes any sense. There's something odd about turning on the computer at the end of the day in order to connect to other people, after x hours of which that "I'm all alone" feeling could still not get entirely dispelled. We're all used to it now (not the mention the new generation whose entire lives are recorded and pinned and catalogued and reblogged online since birth), and nobody bats an eye at this, but maybe...it's not really a replacement for the old-fashioned face-to-face type of interactions? (I'm not doing a very good job of communicating online, am I? Maybe we should've chatted in person!) ;)
And I know the Internet has foundamentally changed the way we communicate, and in so, so many ways for the better, so that the repressed, the disparaged, the isolated, the underrepresented and the fanatic (yeah!!!) can all find a voice and find a community and find acceptance and encouragement and shelter and everything good and great online, but there are times when the best emoticon in the world is no competition for a good old-fashioned, real-world hug.
Maybe computers would have arms in the future? ;) (And look like a human, too? Would that help? Sorry about the meandering, random thoughts.)
I suppose you can do that in real life, too, but we humans have evolved to be able to read facial expressions and decode the emotional layer of nonverbal communication, and that layer, with the exception of real-time video chat, frequently gets lost in online interactions. And it's a lot harder to pass for say, a teenage girl when you're a middle-aged man off-screen. I don't think that matters, tbh, in most cases of fandom interactions. Nevertheless, online interactions can feel a little more...indirect, more removed, more concealed. I mean, someone could be a crying mess and projecting absolute calm online, and, well, in real life there'd be tell-tale signs that might expose their charade, but online, it could feel like you're prying to even ask.
Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. A sort of frustration with the fact that increasingly, our social interactions are moving online, and there's this built-in obstacle in replicating authentic relationships and interactions. On the subway everyone's eyes are glued to a little 2"x5" screen in their hands, furiously typing or scrolling. Do people have missed connections anymore (and I don't mean dropped phone calls)?
In a way, social media is a misnomer. It's the thing we're on when we're not out having fun with friends or catching up with family or getting a refreshment at the local cafe or even cooking up a meal for one or curling up with a book. It's something we do when we're not doing anything else. (And now I've managed to make you feel bad. Sorry!) When I started thinking about this last night, and struggling to express this, the thing that came to mind immediately was Alice in Wonderland, specifically the following exchange, altered to fit my own feeling (and originally posted on Tumblr):
BTW, I love all of you, and this is in no way a commentary on my own experience on LJ, which has been just wonderful. But I have this Luddite mistrust of technology that I just FEEL like something is not transmitting across the wire, if that makes any sense. There's something odd about turning on the computer at the end of the day in order to connect to other people, after x hours of which that "I'm all alone" feeling could still not get entirely dispelled. We're all used to it now (not the mention the new generation whose entire lives are recorded and pinned and catalogued and reblogged online since birth), and nobody bats an eye at this, but maybe...it's not really a replacement for the old-fashioned face-to-face type of interactions? (I'm not doing a very good job of communicating online, am I? Maybe we should've chatted in person!) ;)
And I know the Internet has foundamentally changed the way we communicate, and in so, so many ways for the better, so that the repressed, the disparaged, the isolated, the underrepresented and the fanatic (yeah!!!) can all find a voice and find a community and find acceptance and encouragement and shelter and everything good and great online, but there are times when the best emoticon in the world is no competition for a good old-fashioned, real-world hug.
Maybe computers would have arms in the future? ;) (And look like a human, too? Would that help? Sorry about the meandering, random thoughts.)