Friends got me hooked on Twitter a few months ago. Yesterday I signed up for Tumblr–as if I didn’t have enough time-suck devices. There’s Facebook and Flickr and MySpace (though I hardly ever play with that one anymore) and this blog and Alterdestiny and my stuff at BUST…and I could keep going, though I won’t.
I’ve even got a personal site that doesn’t have my name or any identifying details on it, just so I can write the personal things that I can’t share on something easily-searchable like this site. Because somehow nothing seems real anymore if it isn’t shared–even if no one really reads it.
Sort of a tree-falls-in-the-forest feeling. Since I spend much of my time alone–grad student life means I am at home in front of my computer or a stack of books more often than I am around people, and being single means I don’t have that one person around constantly to share minutia with.
A couple of weeks ago I read this article in the New York Times about the digitization of our lives (which I found off Amber’s Twitter) and I’ve been thinking about it a bit since. Came back to mind the other night during a really long actual telephone call with a long-distance friend whom I used to actually know in the flesh. We were talking about technology, different ways to communicate.
Each little outlet of communication that I have is slightly different. I suppose if you kept up with all of them (especially the secret ones) you might get a decent picture of me and of my life, of what I think about and what I feel, of how I look and what makes me sad, angry, happy…even, if I do a good job of writing, what I taste and smell.
If you talked to me on top of it, you might feel like we had a substantial friendship, even if you just talked to me through email or IM. Text messaging feels a little more intimate, since it’s my phone to yours and not just computer to computer through public forums. Actually talking on the phone, when you get into those good, deep conversations that somehow are easier to have when you can’t actually see each other, feels even more intimate these days. Almost no one calls me anymore.
Some don’t because they have all the information they need from these little outlets here. Others don’t because they just text and then we meet up in person. The only ones who call to chat are usually my parents, who aren’t hooked in to Twitter and blogs and ’social networking’ sites.
I still prefer the personal conversations, meeting for crepes on campus under the trees to catch up, talk about points of First Amendment law and our fucked-up relationships, discuss love and loss and the finer points of the Flyers game. Going shopping and trying on dresses and pants off the sale rack while debating Joe Biden vs. Howard Dean as straight-talking Democratic politicians and wondering if we’ll ever get to the point where we’re old enough to feel pressure not to be single.
There’s very little substitute for flesh and blood contact. Yet when I’m isolated by my very lifestyle, I enjoy playing with these little technological wonders, sharing the bits and pieces of my day with all of you instead of with that one concentrated presence in my life.
I have my digitized, sanitized flirtations and my Internet presence, and it keeps me from feeling too lonely. My small, weird world where possibly millions of strangers can look at pictures of me, read my thoughts and feelings (though they don’t).
Would I have this much of a need to share all of this if I were in a relationship? Is it only to combat loneliness, or is it just how we communicate now?
Heh, I wondered the same thing when I signed up for Tumblr. I also have a private blog that I’ve had for some time, and a part of me wonders why I want one blog that friends see and one blog that strangers see. What am I hiding from whom?
I’m not in a relationship either, but I don’t think this is just a way of combating loneliness for me, at least. Or, maybe in a way it is, but not that kind of loneliness; more of an alienation type loneliness, the kind of loneliness that (for me) doesn’t have anything to do with being in a relationship or not (though, I might be weird there, since once past the first flush of love, being in a relationship doesn’t always ease loneliness for me either).
Also, while I find Tumblr’s “follow” a wee bit creepier than the more usual “friend,” would you mind if I were to follow your Tumblr? [I have no idea what Tumblr etiquette is on this... oh, to live in that parallel universe where I have decided to become a pioneer in the field of internet studies, what a brilliant paper I would no doubt he working on right now.]
Sure! I don’t promise it’ll be exciting.