Brandon Moon
Introspective. Gadget Geek. Computer Whisperer. Amateur pianist and guitarist. Investigator of the social impact of technology. Married to the best person ever!
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Have you noticed how in real life, “friendship” is sort of a vague term, but it’s an extremely solid one online? Either you are friends with someone on Facebook, or you are not, right? And somehow this entitles you to knowing all sorts of things about this person, whereas in real life it’s much easier to pick and choose what you share with whom? And then what happens when you don’t care to be that person’s friend anymore? In real life, you simply fall out of contact (and this can happen for any number of reasons; it’s rarely an explicit action), but online you have to explicitly say “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” Or perhaps you just hide them. But maybe there’s too many to do that to. Or maybe you just don’t like an empty news feed.
At it’s core, that’s what this article is about. It’s comparing fundamental similarities and differences in social interaction, both online and in real life. The similarities are usually pretty obvious and intuitive. In real life, we all have a little bit of vanity or ego. We do count friends, just not with numbers. When we are bored, we call up our friends. There’s always a bit of awkwardness with establishing and avoiding friendships. And everyone likes and dislikes different things about everyone else. It stands to reason that social networks—both offline and offline—essentially accomplish the same thing. It also makes sense that both are susceptible to the same follies.
Because both are so similar, I think we probably tend to focus too much on the differences. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it does cause us to develop a negative attitude towards social networks. The truth is, those differences probably aren’t so bad. As human beings, we have an express need to communicate, and we always find a way. Maybe it means adapting how we use social networks to communicate, but we still do it. We create our own “social norms” around our social networks that makes them more useable for all. Pretty neat huh?
And for some reason, I find this all so fascinating.
