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gurdonarkEver since electronic mail and internet message boards became widely used, we've all learned the potential and the limitations of the written word. In particular, we've all learned how important face to face contact, and in particular the nuances of tone of voice and of facial expression can be. It's no surprise that the emoticons came into use, trying to "bridge that gap", but emoticons are good for communicating only in broad outline, and not the details of interaction. One nice thing about this "problem"--the problem that it is hard to communiate and infer one's true feelings with words alone--is that trying to solve the problem makes one a far better writer and a far better reader. This is one allure of LJ. But beyond the problem of nuance, the lack of a context in which to put the observations in a journal render journal reading very different from other forms of communication. When a journalist reports friction with friends, then one is not certain if the journalist's friends are inconstant, or if the journalist is alienating friends, or both. One only has the views of the journal as a guide, and the journal is edited. Sometimes one can infer the answer from the way the journal is written, and in particular the sentences that are "missing" from the narrative. But sometimes one just must accept the journal at face value, because the truth is impossible to ferret out. The data is just not objective enough to know.
Even though obstacles exist to effective inference of the "story" within a journal, it's irresistible to make such inferences. But the problem with doing so is that one can so often be wrong. This creates a useful trait, though--one tends to view one's ideas as working theories rather than as fact. I think in "real life" we tend to put far too much trust in the evidence of facial expression and vocal nuance. On line, we know to reserve judgments about people, as our theories about what we read in e mail, IM and in weblogs evolves.
I'm puzzled by the addiction factor of these internet interfaces.
I read in yesterday's news the story about the California woman who is alleged to have placed ample micro-wavable food in the refrigerator, but otherwise left her two young children home alone while she went to meet a North Carolina man she met on the internet. Parents behaving very badly long predates the internet, but these kind of "lost my head on-line" stories seem somehow pretty prevalent to me. I wonder if the reason why some very imperfect situations arise from these internet contacts is that when one is only reading text and perhaps viewing a graphic or a picture, then the reader must supply so much of the nuance. The play of fantasy inherent in that process is intriguing, and I wonder if it prompts folks to "live out" the fantasy.
I went to webmd.com, my personal favorite resource for "off the cuff" information on anything medical, and ran the search term "internet addiction". The articles there said pretty much what I would have guessed they would say--that when an obsession with the internet causes one to neglect one's real life or to engage in risky behavior, it's useful to view internet use as a form of psychological addiction. I wonder if what makes the internet so addictive for folks is that one can use one's imagination to expand text and message board posts into an entire set of life alternatives to the life that one has at home. At home, one deals with a job, a significant other (or lack of significant other), physical, financial and temporal limitations. On the internet, one is liberated from so many of these constraints.
There's almost a luddite view of the internet that still is an undercurrent in our society, although I've noticed that as internet use inceases, so does societal acceptance. This view of internet interfaces among people is that they are all somehow inferior, bordering on bad. I do not subscribe, obviously, to this sort of thinking, as I find that the 'net has brought me in contact with so many interesting people. The internet is particularly good for helping people who imagine that they were almost space-alien unique to discover that We are not Alone.
Although it's fun, though, to find other interesting people on the 'net, the limitations in the medium always makes one feel that one really "knows" people, and yet does not "know" them at all. I've read that similar things happen in relationships which arise on pleasure cruises, when proximity and freedom from societal responsibilities creates synchronies of folks who would never be friends or lovers in "real life".
I think on-line friends are a wonderful thing--something to cherish. But I try never to forget that it is at home that I have my rich realities and my daily responsibilities. I have no real desire to visit an "island of lost boys" where I am freed of these choices and paths through some wish fulfillment based on an IM. I think that one of the hardest things we learn in life, but one of the most useful, is that the true path is often not the exciting path, nor the path in which all our dreams come true.
I'm looking now at a picture I took of a rose garden in southern California last April. The blooms are wild and free, and trees in bloom surround the little slice of scenery. I enjoyed that day in the garden, but I'd never imagine that I could live every day in the garden. Sometimes I think that it's tempting to imagine that some "other" world exists out there, which one can find without effort or true cost. In fact, if one needs to change one's world, one needs to take difficult steps first, because the fantasies steps are rarely the true ones.
As for me, though, I'll stay in my own particular world, but I'll still read journals, trying to look at distant planets I'll never visit.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 09:30 am (UTC)Is it like glorified penpals? That's what I'm not sure. Could a "perfect" on line friendship arise?
I don't know.
Re:
Date: 2003-01-14 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 12:26 pm (UTC)I like all kinds of friends, though, on, off and otherwise.
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Date: 2003-01-14 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 08:13 am (UTC)On another note, my poor brother came home one day, a couple of years ago, to find his wife gone and most of thier possessions missing. Several weeks later he found out that she had left him for someone she had met in another state, through a chatroom.
My brother has never really recovered, and has turned to evangelical Christianity, an endless round of church and Christian rock to soothe his sorrow. An internet causualty.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 09:55 am (UTC)That's too bad about your brother, although if he listened to good old fashioned church hymns instead of "Christian rock", I'd think he's getting some compensation. Some of those old standards are really good, and really comforting, in their own way.
Typing here now
Date: 2003-01-14 08:06 pm (UTC)Mostly I just wanted to comment to register my appreciation for your post on this subject. I can see the workings of an organised (and busy, getting-things-done-off-the-to-do-list) mind in it, but despite this (!) you have typed much I find in my own mind (although the file isn't in its place in the cabinet). I agree that the internet frees us from certain societal prohibitions and perhaps even our own awkwardnesses at times. I think it provides a big grab bag of personalities to dip into - something that a lot of people aren't able to expose themselves to 'in the flesh' with any regularity, for reasons as varied as geographical distance, physical disability or just plain shyness. We have access to a lot more people in general, and therefore are more likely to locate like-minded people than we might be in real life, unless we are deeply immersed in a job involving our passions, perhaps?
A further advantage to the internet is that people - and here, I refer to sensible people, who don't ask for your pic and bust measurements before asking what your interests are - are able to get beyond their own 'automatic' responses to outward appearances and circumstance. Whilst I have only met two people who were online acquaintances before they were RL ones, and this was really only because our paths were going to cross anyway, I'm not about to disregard the possibilities of this medium as a way to enrich one's RL social life more selectively.
Re: Typing here now
Date: 2003-01-14 09:06 pm (UTC)I certainly don't have the secret of mindfulness, and I certainly do have an overwhelmed by work feeling lately.
I do like to meet on line people, and although I consistently say that off line and on line are very different, of the people on my friends list I'd like to meet virtually everyone.
But isn't on line curious? I believe it was you who,in common with me, was once ejected from a friends' list for the sin of saying that while the particular poster's experience was a postal clerk was unfortunate, not all postal workers were satanic. I had a similar experience in which I expressed the sentiment that I was "not sure" about a particular celebrity the poster admired, which gave rise to a post threatening immediate expulsion for anyone who "dissed" the poster's favored celebrity. LJ is fun, but it is certainly no less odd than RL.
That said, though, I must agree that LJ is a place in which one could easily expand one's social list, without quite going to the extremes of destroying one's own life in obsession.
Lately, my chief fear about LJ is that I am not using it as the writing/personal interconnection device it should be,
and I intend to tackle why I feel this way soon.
Of course, it may just be the beginnings of the flu kicking in.
Look After You!
Date: 2003-01-15 03:51 am (UTC)I think it affects one psychologically these days. I'd say, don't let it get you down, but that really is what it does. So be kind to yourself, drink lots of water, don't sweat the small stuff: what needs to be done will be done.
Perhaps your feeling of being overwhelmed by work is a sympton, because to me you appear effective and efficient in ways I only aspire to. Cut yourself some slack: the 'flu is a message to be good to yourself, and it does nobody any good to ignore it. Dr Kel hath spoken.
Re: Look After You!
Date: 2003-01-15 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 04:51 pm (UTC)I recently read (don't recall where) that the 72nd richest country in the world is a virtual country - people buy and sell (on ebay) virtual houses and goods from the various on-line gaming they do. Everquest, Ultima, etc.
Are your friends in online gaming friends or virtual visions?
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Date: 2003-01-14 07:04 pm (UTC)I used to play a lot of chess on line, though, and almost never befriended the game players there--curious.