The internet and social life

[Rum]

I have been struck of late, by the changes in how people interact and socialise with the development of the internet. For me yesterday, meeting half a dozen other Ratz, was the culmination of a period where the internet has had an increasingly large role to play in how I meet and interact with people.

As an 'early adopter' I invited an email list friend - an American touring Europe to stay with me and my ex something like 15 or more years ago. The internet was in its early days and as it happened she turned out to be a bit weird! (no pics - or perhaps one sent as an attachment), no real sense of her as a person etc..

I met my current partner playing an online game with her. That is now really common, but it was thought of as a bit strange until recently.

What strikes me is that people can now interact in a different way than was possible in the past and form relationships that simply would not have been possible simply because their paths would not have crossed. And that is great as it turns out!

What binds us together here is our common atheism - a common 'issue'. I can't think of any way in 'RL' we could have come together as a 'virtual' community and then meet up as groups of real peeps. The amazing and pleasing thing is that it really works. I had more in common with the people that I spent yesterday with, in really meaningful ways, than any number of 'friends' I have made through what might be considered 'conventional' means.

What is your experience of net, friendship and the impact on your social 'experience'?

[Feck]

Well I speak to sober straight people and I only know a few of those in RL .I have let people take pictures of me !! I know what time it is in Australia!I If I ever go visit the Former Yugoslavia I know a translator .I've been invited to go visit the US . And I count a Welshman as one of my friends FFS !

That's all impressive stuff really

[sifaka]

[Beelzebub2]

Well I speak to sober straight people and I only know a few of those in RL .I have let people take pictures of me !! I know what time it is in Australia!I If I ever go visit the Former Yugoslavia I know a translator .I've been invited to go visit the US . And I count a Welshman as one of my friends FFS !

That's all impressive stuff really

It would be an honour to have you here.

[Ayaan]

For years the only other atheists I knew were online. As I got more involved with forums, I started getting to know people and several of them have become friends. On July 10th, I'm marrying one of them - me, the woman who thought she'd die alone.

I have learned things about myself and the world at large that I probably would have never learned otherwise. Like many of my fellow Americans, I have never been outside of the states. However, unlike so many of my fellow Americans, I know that the world does not end at the US borders, despite what the nightly news here would like us to think.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I am such a weird fucker that meeting people with whom I have anything but the most fleeting shred of commonality is rare indeed until... The Interwebz!

There are people here that I know better, and have more in common with, than almost everyone that I know in 'real life'. I even met the person that means most to me in the entire world on the web - sadly, trans-continental distance means that that is pretty much the only place we meet - still...

I wish there had been interwebz 25 years earlier. It is the best invention evah!

[JimC]

I immediately grasped the first term in the thread title, but I'm afraid the second escapes me...

Is it a technical term within antropology, or possibly semiotics?

[Rum]

I immediately grasped the first term in the thread title, but I'm afraid the second escapes me...

Is it a technical term within antropology, or possibly semiotics?

Shed the cardigan and let your social life blossom Jim!

[floppit]

I think about this lots. I've always felt curious about behaviour, very much my own included and the internet is so unique, so young, and spreading so fast it's compelling to watch. I'm sure in the future they'll be people answering a thread about what time in history they wished they'd lived who say now, just to see this , just to watch this get born.

There are things I don't know, why I write what I'd hesitate to say (like the above paragraph), IRL I'm concerned it would be socially unacceptable to speak like that, yet on the web it seems ok. Maybe it's the time, the pauses in writing - I don't know. Yet, at the same time I think I'm very recognisable online, this me is the one that peeps out whenever I can IRL - I don't care if I'm wrong, I'd rather be wrong and think than avoid it by just not thinking, just avoiding anything risky or deep.

I can only write that about me, I can't know about someone else, I don't know why or how other people feel differently online but I've never felt it's less genuine. Of course there are the odd exceptions but that's just as true face to face but overall I think people are just as likely to be genuine over the net as face to face - either they will or they won't and in both cases I think a lack of integrity is often more about a lack of self awareness or thought than a deliberate attempt to deceive.

I'm not sure that the things which seem so new about talking online are really that new, I suspect they are near to things we lost as people moved about more geographically and long standing communities dwindled. Telling stories, chewing the cud, commenting on the state of the world, and that most human thing, trying to figure it all out - I think we are moving back to a more natural state where these things are everyday parts of life, away from the transience of constant flows of strangers or near strangers. I suspect in countries with less fluid people movement, and less TV a great deal of time is spent as we do here, in fact that's more than just a suspicion.

I don't think that adds up to a single coherent reply - oh well....

[The Curious Squid]

I couldn't agree more, Rum. I joined this community in the really early days of RDF to discuss religion, back then I would never have guessed that I'd not only meet some of you but actually care for a lot of you more than friends I've known for years.

[Trolldor]

The internet hasn't really changed that much about how people meet.

Beforehand, letters and telephone calls were from people you knew. To meet a stranger by chance was possible, and so was starting a relationship as has no doubt happened, but so much harder to achieve either deliberately or by accident than it is now. You don't need a number or an address, you can just log in to a chatroom or a forum and deliberately seek out strangers in a way that used to require you to go out to parties and nightclubs and strike up conversations in bookshops and what not.
Same premise, different medium.

The only thing the internet has accomplished is the ability for an individual to say... anything. Anything, in any tone, for whatever reason, without fear of repurcussion.

[maiforpeace]

I couldn't agree more, Rum. I joined this community in the really early days of RDF to discuss religion, back then I would never have guessed that I'd not only meet some of you but actually care for a lot of you more than friends I've known for years.

+100

Like Ayaan I was resigned to remaining unmarried, possibly finding a nice gay companion to live out the rest of my days with.

Then, about 13 years ago my dear departed father gave me my first computer and it changed my life.

I met my husband, got involved with all kinds of organizations and groups, and met people that I now call dear friends through the internet.

The internet hasn't really changed that much about how people meet.

Beforehand, letters and telephone calls were from people you knew. To meet a stranger by chance was possible, and so was starting a relationship as has no doubt happened, but so much harder to achieve either deliberately or by accident than it is now. You don't need a number or an address, you can just log in to a chatroom or a forum and deliberately seek out strangers in a way that used to require you to go out to parties and nightclubs and strike up conversations in bookshops and what not.
Same premise, different medium.

The only thing the internet has accomplished is the ability for an individual to say... anything. Anything, in any tone, for whatever reason, without fear of repurcussion.

You don't have family or friends on other continents then.

Perhaps things haven't changed much meeting strangers in the casual setting you speak of, whether in person or in virtual reality, but for other relationships, and the most meaningful ones in my humble opinion, the internet has revolutionized how people meet and socialize.

Because of the internet, I am able to stay in much closer touch with my family and friends that live on other continents or at great distances. Back in the old days one had to plan ahead for that special overseas call to relatives that cost $50 dollars a pop while the egg timer ticked off the precious three minutes you got for that price. Now we can talk to each other AND see each other for free for hours on Skype. I can see all the children in my family grow up.

I have a best friend who lives on the other side of the country. We spend hours talking on Skype. We have even watched TV together at the same time, and shared virtual popcorn.

That experience is because of this amazing technology. We only dreamed of this when I was young.

The internet ROCKS.

[Trolldor]

You don't have family or friends on other continents then.

She uses a telephone.

[Trolldor]

The telephone revolutionised communication. The internet's "revolution" is not the way it communicates, but the audience it communicates to. You can share ideas and information in volumes unprecedented only a click away. The value of the internet to social interaction is miniscule compared to the freedom of information it allows. It is the reason why things such as 'net neutrality' are so goddamn important, it is the last place on Earth that you can speak uncensored and even that is disappearing.

All the myspace and facebook and twitter clones, all the chat rooms and webcam rooms and skypes are insignificant compared to just a single website: http://wikileaks.org/

[Svartalf]

I'm more of a virtual kind of guy, given that most of my net buddies dwell on the other side of the planet, and I don't have the $$ to go visit while so few of them ever come my way (and my place is too small for me to seriously invite somebody over... might be doable, but I'm not sure how I'd manage to get space for the guest bed to be useable)