Thursday, 21 May 2009

• Add A Friend? Is It More Than Just An Electronic Connection?

   

  They are the people you just met at happy hour in between a Hefeweizen and a Cosmo. Or the person you haven’t seen for 25 years when you both were sporting shoulder-length hair in high school. Or the stranger who is a Facebook friend of a FB friend of a FB friend. What’s three degrees of separation in the electronic world?

   

  They are the people who want to add you as a FB friend. Some of us ponder for days whether to confirm that “Add A Friend” request while others click it within seconds. Whether it’s a Facebook buddy or a Twitter follower, we still go through that excruciating process of whether to click the confirm button.

   

  Pressing that precarious key is the start of a new electronic friendship that is the beginning of an interaction with a person via binary codes of ones and zeros. But it’s more than that, because electronic friendships are much different than face-to-face companionship.

   

  I’ve written before about how personalities change from the real world to the electronic world. Sometimes, people embrace completely different personalities. From some shy cipher to a partier at the electronic chat room. Do we really know who the person is on the other side of the world-wide-web?

   

  And that is what the real concern is when confirming a new friend. We don’t really know a person, if we do not have regular physical interaction.

   

  For most of us, in the real world we are selective with whom we spend precious time. I surround myself with a limited number of close, intimate friends. Because in the real world, where we actually interact both verbally and non-verbally, we are more vulnerable. People get to know our attitudes, our thoughts, our hurts, our dreams.

   

  Real relationships, however, can expose us to betrayal, humility, grief, and abuse. But we risk it, because healthy relationships bring us intimacy, affirmation, companionship. No longer is there loneliness. Whether we have the charm-filled social skills or not, we yearn for connectedness, for relationally-intimate companionship.

   

  In the world of tweets, Facebook pokes, and Xanga blog posts, electronic friendships have weak boundaries. These relationships are more about communication, less about intimacy and companionship.

   

  This new community leans toward feeding our voyeuristic tendencies. In the real world, we don’t typically forage through a friend’s medicine cabinet, closets, drawers, and cupboards.

   

  In the electronic world, however, we’re open for people to practically cyber-stalk us—our vacation photos, posts with other friends, even the ability to know who is on our friends list. It’s all there for those of us who allow it. (And frankly, I’m more suspect of people who hide all of their info on FB, as if they are hiding who they really are; why are they even on it then?)

   

  But we love voyeurism. Tweeters crave Ashton Kutcher’s every twitter move. We flock to watch Run’s House, The Simple Life, Nick and Jessica, and Anna Nicole. We relate to the Desperate Housewives who peer out the window with binoculars to see what the neighbors on Wisteria Lane are doing now.

   

  We are nosy people by nature. It’s why we add friends in the electronic world. It’s fun. It makes life interesting. It can even dispel boredom.

   

  But if the closest, most intimate relationships are based on one click away, our personal community is built like a house of cards. Weak, precarious, and unstable.

   

  Real relationships, however, with even the risks that may occur are the real deal.

   

  But go ahead… click that confirm button.

   

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