Getting to Know People

I was homeschooled. For the majority of my life, I had few friends and most of them lived 45+ minutes drive away. The internet aided these relationships without a doubt. I talk to my best friend over the pandemic more often than I did before. I was able to communicate and coordinate with people from the local high school despite never attending there. These are examples of online and in-person contact working hand-in-hand to present the best possible outcome, but let's look examine my in-person and online interactions that don't have as much overlap.

Something I dislike about the critiques of technology is how much they aggrandize in-person conversations as if they all were inherently valuable. I have conversations with people all the time, and I’ve discovered that it's very easy to find people boring. Extracting value from social interactions requires skill. You have to know what questions to ask, you have to probe, to get to the heart of their interests. At my current skill level, such successes are the exception and not the norm. It takes work to get to know people.

In Sherry Turkle’s Ted talk, she says that Stephen Colbert asked her “Don’t all those little sips of online communication add up to one big gulp of real conversation?” This struck me as an insightful question, so I was saddened when her response fell short. Part of her response in the Ted Talk was to show a screenshot of a text conversation that may have happened. Human beings are not perfect, nor are we consistent. When examining a human practice, especially a common one, its very easy to find people who practice it in an unconstructive way. This is one form of the “Straw Man Fallacy.” Attack an idea by attacking its weakest link. Fortunately, this screenshot is not the entirety of Ms. Turkle’s response. She argues that while “sips” of conversation can be meaningful, they don’t help us learn more about other people. They don’t help us get to know people. I disagree with this premise.

I’ve mentioned that I have a private discord server several times in class. This server began as a place where the veteran members of a comic book forum could interact without having to put up with the new forum users who didn’t know the rules. This level of privacy gave us the freedom to disclose information about our personal lives and struggles. Since joining this server, I have had many valuable conversations about fandom, philosophy, life, and theology. I’ve made confessions on that server I never would have made in real life. In Program or be Programmed, Douglas Rushkoff argues that internet anonymity leads to us presenting less authentic versions of ourselves online. While I agree that can very much be the case, internet anonymity can lead to the exact opposite outcome. Would people take confession if their priests weren’t sworn to confidentiality? Would they hire lawyers if there wasn’t client-attorney privilege? I’ve bared the dark depths of my soul to my anonymous internet friends because I know the worst thing they can do is block me. When I interact with people in person, I’ll often feel constrained by social regulations that I barely understand. (Possibly because I was under-socialized as a youth). Understanding these social conventions and learning how to use them is an important skill that I’m trying to learn, but I’ve rarely found that it makes me more honest.

In summary, I’ve found that meaningless social interactions either in-person or online are a sign that I’m doing something wrong. The goal is not to shun one in favor of the other, but to become skilled in both so I can make the most of the resources at my disposal. It's a difficult process, but I'm working at it.