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Four score, and 15 years ago, when the earth was in retrograde and the planets were awaiting the new Millennium...
I kid! Really, I don't want to bore you, but there's been a lot of discussion about socializing on the internet, and I'm noticing a lot of hurt feelings. I'm not an internet expert, but I'm about to get paid to think about these issues a lot, so if I'd like to toss out some thoughts on this.
The Internet is a medium. Much in the same way that the telephone, the television, or the radio is a medium. On either end of the medium is the sender and the receiver. The sender then sends the message, as transmitted through the medium, to the receiver.
Relationships occur in all mediums. Some relationships are more passive than others. And some relationships are more descriptive than others. When you talk to someone face to face, you are able to see the other person's facial expressions, hear the person speak, and touch the person, so not only is this the most interactive way to communicate (sans medium) but it's also the least vulnerable to misunderstanding. The more senses people use to communicate, the more people are able to understand each other. For this reason, the telephone is even more vulnerable to misperceived messages, because one cannot see nor feel the person with whom he or she is communicating.
The Internet, whether that be email, message boards, social networking sites, or news sites, is very interactive, but it's also the most vulnerable to misunderstanding. Not only can you not see or touch the person with whom you're communicating, but you also can't even hear, smell, or taste them (for that matter.) All you see is the output of that person's mental activity in the form of typed words. So your need to interpret what he or she is saying is at its utmost.
However, people still can have relationships on the Internet, and much in the same way as we use our imaginations when we read a book, we use our imaginations when we interact with another person. In the absence of information, people fill in the rest with his or her own past experiences, so no two interpretations of internet material will be the same. The internet is not real, but it's our minds that make it real. So, relationships on the Internet do matter to us.
Our egos also matter much on the Internet. If you look at older media, the average person did not post personal information in public places in order to make friends or contact like-minded people. In the 1950's, for instance, college students didn't place lithograph bio's of themselves on public kiosks with their picture, personal information, and even a means for others to contact them. The Internet offers a place that feels safe to do so (you typically access the Internet in your house). You also cannot daily see, hear, or touch the people who are reviewing your information, so that lessens the immediate sense of danger that college students in the 1950's (for instance) likely would have felt (although it's much more dangerous, in my personal opinion).
However, today's social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook, a person can post this information with ease. In fact, not only can a person post his or her profile, but also can advertise themselves with catchy visuals, and even music. This is a way a person puts himself and his interests on display in order to catch the attentions of other people with similar interests. It's all quite natural, and somewhat technologically determinate, that the medium amplifies one's self-esteem as a means to make friends with others. On top of that, friends are typically quantified. "How many MySpace friends do I have?" And numbers (for some) can lead to a type of competition with others. "Do I have more/less MySpace friends than another person?" People can and do feel hurt or uplifted because of this dynamic.
DU is a bulletin board site in the way that it's not quite as evolved as MySpace or Facebook. However, relationships are made and broken, disagreements and agreements are exchanged, etc. We are interacting with each other through the medium provided by this site. So when a person posts a query asking others to name their "favorite," or "most detestable" DU'ers, people's feelings will be affected: How many people on DU think enough of me to refer to my username? This beckons the old days of high school senior polling where people are stating who will be the most successful, etc. Again, people can feel hurt because of this, so when I see a thread like this, I tend to back away, because I think it can only lead to hurt feelings. There's no way to avoid it. So I do think it's something to be considered heavily when posted.
I think that our use of this medium will not mature for some time, but I do think there will be a point in time when we learn how to be more civil to one another and learn how to communicate tactfully. The earliest days of radio, before the Radio Act of 1927, were much like this. A lot of communication, but a lot of noise, where each person talked over one another's frequency so many messages were blurred. I don't think the government will regulate the Internet as a "scare resource," because it's not scarce. However, people will adjust to it as they did the media of the past. It's up to us to determine what those standards are because, after all, the Internet is the most populist of media.
Okay... gotta go shower and head to my friend's Super Bowl party! Toodles!
~Writer~
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