April 8, 2004
Keeping It Real
[This was originally posted over on http://solipsisters.blog-city.com in response to a post by the fabulous MsRachel. A few people told me I should get my own damn blog to post this stuff in, and I'm trying to take that as a compliment.]
What Karl says about this over in the Moronosphere is right along the lines of the thoughts I've been trying to put into words for the past week, and describes part of what bugs me about certain parts of Orkut and indeed about a lot of the modern generation of online social network/chatter/bloggers. That is, the notion that "if it's on the Internet, it's just pretend".
In the pre-web, pre-commercialization days, when most Internet activity took place on Usenet and listservs and mailing lists and places like The WELL, there was very little anonymity or pseudonymity. Everyone's access was either through their employer or their school, everyone pretty much went by their real name, with their real email address. Everyone had an "identity" which mapped at least somewhat to the real world, and everyone was thus "invested" (as Shirky would say; see here: http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) in this identity. It was a vibrant community. To be sure there were lots of disagreements, lots of flamewars, lots of stupidity, lots of stuff that people were more likely to do online that off...but it wasn't considered "unreal" or "pretend". There wasn't such a distinction between online and offline; they were simply two different faces of the same reality. Sure, a person might behave differently online than off, but that was just analogous to behaving differently out in a bar than they do at work. There was still some central core of identity that was "real".
And so, because of this, we were all much more likely to meet people in the real world to continue and extend the online relationships. If we were all into tattoos, we might hang out together at Freddy Corbin's studio. If we were all into funk, we might all meet up at the Maceo Parker show. We went out to dinner together, invited each other to parties. We were real friends, even if we had originally met over the ether instead of face to face.
With the extension of the net to the unwashed masses, things were bound to change. Anonymity become not only more prevalent, but preferred, simply because of the sheer number of people who were trying to scam you or make a quick buck off of you. People took on personas, invested in the personas, and often those personas were radically different from the real person behind them. There's nothing wrong with that. If it's fun, I'm all for you having a blast doing it.
The kicker, though, is what I read as the subtext of the sisters post that started all this. That is, the notion that it's all pretend, it's *supposed* to be pretend, you're not supposed to have *any* expectation that it's real, and the thought of actually meeting any of these people you chat with or flirt with or insult online is outright fanciful.
Because of this expectation of unreality and the bad behavior that goes with it, I haven't participated much in any online forums in the past few years, other than one usenet group, austin.food, which until recently was still a little fun. And so when I first got my Orkut invite, I was skeptical. But when I got on, found out that it had the feeling of *reality* to it...real people, using real names, trying to forge real connections and relationships...I was pretty psyched. This was old Usenet all over again. It had barriers to entry, it had the beginnings of identity and accountability. This is what makes Orkut worth doing.
Out of my 80 or so friends on Orkut, I am friends with 21 of them in the real world. Of those, 10 are people who I first met online, then became friends with on the outside. People who I would not ever have known existed, but for the online communities we participated in.
This possibility of forging real relationships only exists in so far as people are allowed, encouraged, to treat online interactions as real. To the extent that people are expected to only present "bright and shiny armour" and are expected not to expect anything more from others, the communities will not be capable of fostering real friendships. When you approach all these interactions as "well, they only like what I present to them, and I only like what they allow me to see", when you start with the assumption that "our tongues are firmly in our cheeks" then you approach all these interactions from a base level of mistrust, with an expectation that the real will be a disappointment, thus the unreal online is preferable, and since it's not tied to the real, you can do what you want without regard for feelings, for consequences, for any of the things that make real relationships worthwhile.
I'm not talking so much about the sexual stuff, although that's part of it, but friendship in general. When we flirt with someone online, doesn't it feel strange that we're supposed to *expect* that their persona is fake, that their flirtation is an act, and that they feel smug about putting one over on us? Are *real* personas and *real* flirtation (no matter how much tamer it might be if you had to mean it a little bit) really that boring? I don't think they're that boring, and there is more than one woman on my friends list that I've shared real world feelings (and more) with.
Karl calls me "born-again Orkut Orthodox". I guess I'm an Internet reactionary. I am an evangelist for the real. Not to the exclusion of the pretend, but as at least an equal partner.
Posted by ray at April 8, 2004 8:37 PM | Permalink
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