Sleepless in Seattle effect
What can we take away from remote, one-way and digital relationships in the internet age?
As I think through the last couple decades and my involvement in the internet I find that there are lessons we can draw from the experience.
We have our online community but how many of us have met in the flesh? In the protein form? I think that’s the key, that’s when you cross the barrier from on-line acquaintance to possible friend.
As a podcaster for many years I have this weird one-way relationship with people I’ve never met. It’s a bit like the audio version of facebook. You get the version of me I want to show you and you can be sure that’s a biased and unrealistic sample.
When I started the podcast I designed it as a performance. I wanted the delivery to be passionate and full of meaning so that you would get the full package of content wrapped in delivery. Trust me, I don’t walk around every day emoting my words to everyone like a walking Shakespearian voice actor.
My point is you are getting a filtered version of me.
That’s not really the main dynamic. The main dynamic is that it’s not about me or what I’m projecting. The version of me that you hear and visualize has more to do with you than me. You are seeing yourself and I’m just the mirror.
That’s the interesting dynamic in digital relationships. You project your own needs on them to fill in the blanks of the communication medium. It’s not them you’re seeing, it’s you.
Think about it. Why do people get so angry and vilify people they’ve never met simply through an on-line interaction? Simply because you are reacting to them through the filter of you. You’re projecting yourself onto their words and sounds and videos.
Understand that in these digital relationships what you are seeing and feeling is an echo of yourself. And ask yourself the question “What is the need that I am projecting to cause this emotional response?”
That being said these are also fresh relationships. We enter the digital relationship free of historical baggage. We can be anyone we want to be. We’re not constrained by even the physical aspects of our nature.
Digital relationships. There have been several news stories recently about people who have started projects to meet all their facebook friends in person. One gentleman was driving across the country to meet his digital friends. He told People Magazine:
“I feel that having a closer relationship with a person helps me to be better. It’s easy to belittle, berate and dismiss somebody with which you have no relationship (or perhaps a Facebook relationship only), but when you spend time at their dinner table, play games with their kids, and hear about their lives, it’s a little bit more difficult to be unkind and uncaring toward them,”
So here’s my challenge to you. Look out across your digital friends and meet them for coffee, or a beer or a run and make the meta-physical physical. Cement some of those friendships. Take that leap and convert some digital acquaintances to physical friends.
Of course, you can buy me a beer or a coffee any time. I’m all over the place – and I may or may not exist. I might just be a reflection of you. I might just be an echo in the void.
Cheers,