This morning, I got up, fed the dogs, got my coffee (the fact that they get fed before my coffee infusion tells you something about my feelings for them,) checked my e-mail, and then looked at my Facebook page. The first thing I saw at the top of my page was a quote posted by a young man of my acquaintance, and it made me think.
The quote was: "'How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.' Alexander Pope"
I suspect, for most who see the quote, they will not think about it at all, much less respond. But that quote struck a chord for me - it summed up something I have been pondering lately, and provided me the blog topic for this day.
As a purveyor of wordcraft, I cherish the subtle meanings and the hidden intentions of a carefully stated piece of prose. This particular piece evokes much thoughtful reflection in me, and my impromptu response was immediate, because the words are meaningful to me.
The landscape of the world has changed. When I was young, growing up in rural Minnesota, going the hour drive to The Cities was a Big Deal, an Event which would be thought about and planned for days, if not weeks, in advance. It usually required at least one long distance phone call, which was, of course, very expensive, so not something to be undertaken lightly. That small step out into the wider world was a major effort, and thus, we tended to be rather insulated from those who were different from us, and whom we did not know.
My, how things have changed. We now think nothing of talking to people across the globe at a moment's notice. We are constantly exposed to thoughts and ideas of every persuasion. We have information beating a path into our brains 24/7. We can have "friends" we have never met, we talk to total strangers and know all about their lives when we wouldn't recognize them if we ran into them at the mall. We see pictures and hear stories of people that have no connection to us, other than that they occupy the same social networking space.
And I am beginning to wonder whether this is all a good thing after all.
Don't get me wrong. I love Facebook for it's ability to bring me into touch with people I wouldn't otherwise see or talk to. I have reconnected with my roots in a way that has enriched my life unexpectedly, and it is a wonderful thing.
I have found an old friend once again, and restarted a relationship that I didn't even know I missed until it was there again, and I am grateful for that. I have built new relationships with other people that were only tangential to my existence when I was young, but with whom it turns out I have more in common than I realized, now that we are grown up. And it all happened with the simple click of a mouse.
The beauty of it all is that I don't have to explain anything about myself, because they already know my story from having lived it with me all those years ago in the small town where we started. Our parents are friends, we attended the same churches and schools and musical events, and our shared history gives us a common stage from which to view the world, even all these years later. Although our relationships are now primarily in cyberspace, they are rooted in the realities of the past.
But perhaps it is that very point which makes me wonder about the obsession of Facebook today, and the importance of keeping it in its place.
The dark side of social networking is, of course, that people who don't know you at all have an illusion that they do, and the two dimensional person you present on the page may be nothing like the real person you are. I fear that real relationships are being threatened by the shifting sands of a cyberworld that can be anything you want it to be, and the outcome may be, in the end, that what is most important will be ignored for what is not valuable at all.
I read an article just yesterday about connectedness, and how people are having permanent long distance relationships, aided by computers and webcams and social networking sites. Those interviewed expressed the thought that they were, in fact, intimately connected via cyberspace, even though they were hundreds of miles apart.
That made me wonder about the reality of the relationships, because it is pretty easy to be with someone for a few minutes online every few hours during a day. It's a whole other universe to be with someone in person 365 days a year. It's a rare person who would be flattered in the comparison, because in the former you can be anyone you want to be, while in the latter, you have no choice but to be yourself.
I have a friend who is in his late 20's, and unhappily single still. He has shared with me some of his frustrations, and it has been interesting to hear about dating in the 21st Century. Things have changed, and not necessarily for the better.
These days, when you find someone in whom you have an interest, the first thing you do is facebook them, to see what they look like. Then you send them a message; maybe ask to be friends. From there, you leave a message on their wall, or perhaps even chat, building up to exchanging cell phone numbers. Then you text back and forth for a few days.
By the time you get around to having that first date, you have already talked more than a lot of couples used to after weeks of dating. While we used to spend the week thinking about that special person, planning what to say when we were finally together again, in the accelerated dating culture of today, young adults have already had all the conversations before they even meet. It seems backwards to me, taking away the mystery, which is so much a part of the thrill of getting to know each other.
I can also see a risk to real relationships, as the easy flirting and instant access give you an illusion of a relationship that may not reflect a meeting of the minds involved. People with nothing to lose can harm those with everything to lose with a careless tap on the keyboard, and ill chosen words are seen instantly by hundreds of people on all sides of the equation.
In the last couple of days, I have seen that potential for disaster manifest itself several different ways, and they all worry me. As a friend recently pointed out, the problem with electronic communication is that there is no emotion, no body language, to help you interpret what is meant and what is intended, nor to help you understand how your words have been received. The anonymity of it all is what makes it so powerful; someone can engage in relational guerrilla warfare, and the victim won't even see it coming.
Google recently released a social networking feature for their e-mail that put this danger into powerful perspective for me. Research has shown that the success of social networking is directly related to the number of contacts you have amassed. Thus, the developers wanted to be sure that anyone using Google Buzz would have as many contacts as possible from the start. Someone in an ivory tower decided the best way to achieve this would be to include everyone you e-mailed from your account in a publicly viewed network, with your most frequent correspondents being ranked at the top of the list.
The outcry was immediate, and fairly devastating for Google, as people were suddenly put on the defensive by everyone from spouses to friends to co-workers, forced to explain the presence of this contact or that near the top of their list. I am willing to bet that more than a few friendships, not to mention relationships, blew up on the path to enlightenment before Google acknowledged the consequences of their ill conceived plan.
The saddest part, however, is that many of the people who were hurt were probably innocent bystanders, caught in a web of suspicion cast not by willfully inappropriate behavior, but by the unintended consequences of something meaningless that was left open to misinterpretation. Such is the danger of cyberspace, where everything is open to whomever is on your buddy list, and the most innocent of actions can be twisted into something nefarious at the whim of anyone who has an ax to grind.
I enjoy Facebook as much as the next person, and I certainly don't see it as an evil thing. But the obsession to check in all the time, know what everyone on your buddy list is doing, thinking, feeling every minute of the day, seems a little dangerous to me. There are apps which report your location so you don't even have to post it yourself, leaving your friends not a trail of bread crumbs, but a literal road map to your location. If I know you are having breakfast across town, but couldn't identify you if I saw you on the street, is that really a good thing for either one of us?
I am not giving up Facebook altogether, but I think there are a few reasons to pause and reflect on the power, both for good and bad, that have been revealed recently. It is a message that I am taking seriously, because I don't want to lose track of the flesh and blood people that are most important to me in order to know what someone I've never met is doing for lunch.
I have gradually become aware that the power to misinterpret words or intentions is greater than ever before, and is now carried out in front of a rather large audience, made up of people who may not have the same goals as me. I think I will be far more careful of the words I post in public, and keep my thoughts that may be best left in privacy to myself.
If Alexander Pope were to write his story today, I don't know what he would say. Instead of the illicit marriage, perhaps he would refer to cyberspace relationships, and the separation of the lovers would, instead, refer to the separation of oneself from the fantasy.
"How happy I deleted my Facebook page! I am forgotten by the social networking world, I am only who I really am. The angst of group thought is no longer an obsession in my head. I pray, I wish, I dream. I am me, and I am real."
