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12/28/2002 Entry: "When things go sour"
The internet can be great, can't it? I can say with honesty that I've made some genuine friends via email, bulletin board and the web with people I've never met in places I've never been to. It is possible to build up a sense of common purpose and shared vision and when it works the results can be life-enriching. Communities built this way tend to be self-selecting in a way that is not possible off-line - "lurking" around a bulletin board can give a visitor a good idea of the sort of place it is without anyone ever knowing they were there (unless they look carefully at their access logs). Try getting away with that in the average church or social club!But there is a downside to this. It seems that "internet friendship" is of necessity more fragile than the more conventional variety. There seems to be a greater tendency to take offence, to "speak" more harshly than most people would in a face-to-face conversation and fallings-out can be devastatingly sudden. For all the virtuality of the internet friendship, when it breaks down the pain and sense of loss is very real and can impact on a very wide group of people.Perhaps it is because internet friendships are so easily made that they they are also easily broken - "easy come, easy go". Most of the clues we get in our norml interactions - facial expression, body language, tone of voice etc - are denied us on the internet and we are left with only our own feelings and the actual words that are exchanged. If either or both side is below par, if cultural diversity leads to a subtly different reading of the same words, if misundestanding escalates unchecked we have a recipe for the breakdown of a relationship.I don't have any answers to this. I'm not sure I even have the beginnings of an answer. Just be careful out there.
Replies:
Well-said observations. Perhaps, as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium *is* the message, to a large degree...Rick
Posted by Rick O'Donnell @ 12/31/2002 01:45 AM CST
Well put. Carefulness can be learned through misunderstanding and hardship. I tend to learn the hard way myself. Hard headed I guess. But it can be community. That is what you offer here, and I thank you from the bottom of my little black heart. Blog on!
Posted by Bene Diction @ 12/29/2002 08:17 AM CST
