Sunday, May 2, 2010
Making It Real
Talk to anyone my age about social networking sites and you will get an array of responses. The responses will range from fear, paranoia, to utter disgust at the thought of such a public display of one's life, to complete delight about the experience of reconnecting with friends from long ago. It's not too hard to guess where I fall on the spectrum. Social Networking is not for everyone, but it is for me. I admit it, at first I loved reconnecting with friends and looking though all their personal information and photos. It's fun to see where people have landed after all these years. Are they successful? Did they get married/divorced? Do they have kids? How much weight have they gained? What are their political views? Oh come on now, you know you do it to. Once I got beyond the online snooping, something I didn't expect started to happen. I started to rebuild some of these relationships and they became more personal and intense than they were in real life. I don’t mean to insinuate that they aren’t real online. It does get confusing. We haven't seen each other in a very long time. We don't talk on the phone. So, is it really real? I've discovered that once you move from the public display pages of the networking site to the private E-Mails, people open up. I open up. I've found that we open up in a way that we were unable to when we were actually in each other’s daily orbits. It boggles my mine that I talk to some friends online now more than I did when we sat next to each other in high school. My online social network has helped me to get through some tough times. I thought to myself…. What would happen if I reached out to my social networking friends and reconnected in a way that was real? What could I learn? This year, I decided it was time to reach out to friends, whenever possible, on my social networking sites that had a positive impact on my life. This is my attempt to share those interactions, find the meaning in online social networking and share what I learn.
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Interesting idea. :)
ReplyDeleteSharon, I know what you mean. After graduation we all scattered to points unknown. And of course life happens fast and you lose track of what is going on with most. I have considered why do we want to know what happened to our high school chums and even the ones we were less close to at that time in our lives: We are longing to go back to a time when life was simpler for us.
ReplyDeleteConsider this: Did your adult life turn out the way you expect? I do not know one person that can honestly say that it is exactly how it was envisioned. Face it, we are pushing 50 and we are all bruised and battered from life. Somehow we survived to this point, but are in the need of emotional comfort from the storm. Who better to share with than a kindred soul from simpler times?
You know how my mom keeps up with the comings and goings of her high school chums over the years? She watches the obits and when she sees one she knows, she would say, "So that is what happened to him/her!" I always thought that was a depressing way to keep up.
I must admit with the social networking phenomena I never would have guessed that I would have formed stronger bonds with people than I did in childhood. It's great though, no social pressure from peers, just delete them if you don't want to listen them! These are a few observations and I am looking forward to the next post in your blog!
Oh and Sharon, one other thing: WE ARE NOT MIDDLE AGED, WE ARE CHRONICLOGICALLY CHALLENGED! (of course unless it gets us a discount!)
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