Back in the day, you met them face to face. You know, at a concert or party, maybe in school or a holiday. Participating in an extra curricular activity.
Nowadays, being online IS the extra curricular activity.
Where does that leave us?
To get with the program (quite literally) or step away from the computer?
I tread both to be honest. Some days I am all over the place, tweetin' this, facebookin' that, myspacin' him and her, bloggin' my every thought.
Other days? I try and delete the people I'm not sure why I added in the first place, erase the photo's I should NOT have posted drinking wine the night before. You know, things you wouldn't dream of sharing before the internet deemed it not only ok but almost necessary if you want to play fair on the web. Maybe the cool kids will want to be your friend. You show me mine, I'll show you... Uh.
Wine, internet. Got me to thinking...
Although this is the opposite of someone you don't know but instead a real person you know...er, knew and now with years passed it's been propelled into the world wide web, I want to include in this unfortunate situation an example of a bad night in the world of technology...
Scenario; Girl (ok, that's me) decides it's a good idea to drink more wine than she needs. Fair enough. She had a hard day and she had been laying off the booze for a good amount of time. She gets on Facebook. She sees her x-boyfriend had emailed her back. Yes, she found him on FB and sent that "Hello stranger" letter, oops email. Um. She's happily married now but she's still alive you know. So she stares at his picture and from the look of his suit, wonders what he's up to now. He looks successful. She gets nostalgic (even more than when she first emailed him) and starts to think of the old times. For a songwriter, this could get dangerous. And she does it. Yes, she does the very thing we all dread someday we might do, or cringe when we get the "Hello stranger" email ourselves. She begins to write. She tells him some of the songs on her records were for him. She gives titles. She talks about her new life and husband. She tells him he was great and she was stupid. She says it took a LONG time to get over him. Yes, she emphasizes that. Um. She says, "I let you go now sweet boy" as a footer. Yikes. She hits send.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Ok, I admit I don't. I started talking about friends we don't know and somehow veered into the world of x's pre-online to online... Um. Nevermind.
And with that minor distraction out of my system, I can get back to what I really want to say and that is... If I need to talk to a friend really, really late at night (at length) about really personal things, will these 'digital' friends be there? Only online I assume. If I needed to borrow money and couldn't pay my mortgage, would they help me? What if someone close to me passed away and I needed support at the funeral from a friend? What if they saw gross things I did or me at my worst, watched me make big mistakes and see how imperfect I really am? Would they still be my "friend forever?" Exactly.
So why is it that online friends seem to be all the rage? Am I missing the point?
I suppose I would be lying if I said I haven't made some 'real' friends that started online myself. It's just... just. Well. I dunno. Just seems so dirty somehow and so fake and sad. Everyone hopping around trying to leech what info they can, get inspired or bring others down, share ideas or steal them, make a buck, steal a buck. What gives?
Will this only get worse?
Of course there are very good people in the world. Of course we are all good at the core and online like everyone else just doin' our thang. But it can be so private while being so open. It's so easy while making things so much more difficult. Giving us work we didn't know we had.
It can make nice people mean. Mean people can appear nice. Ugh.
I took a hiatus from my music and although health issues were my main reason, I admit I was all too happy to get out of and off of the crazy online world of gimmie gimmie gimmie more...gimmie more. Britney is annoying but she nailed that on the head wouldn't you say?
When I just let the email box pile up and sit, deleted the hundreds of emails from my peers asking for help, didn't sign up for any new social networking sites and let the ones I had sit dormant, stopped putting press kits, CD's and whatever else in the mail... I felt a HUGE sigh of relief. I mean, the kind of relief you feel when you think you lost your rent money and it turns up. The kind of relief you feel when you think you didn't pay a parking ticket and you may have a warrant out for your arrest and head in the pokey at any given time. No, those weren't referencing me.
So I just got on with living and guess what? I met my husband and for the first time in years I had a real place to live, make love, cook, decorate, nest in.
I made really good friends with people I could actually see on a regular basis. Build a real face to face trust that only comes when you spend live in person time with people.
I got good at knitting but I blogged less. I started to dig through my old photo's and send them to the people I had promised to send them to for years.
I even picked up my guitar, without agenda and just played. Like the old days.
Going off line should be like the book 'The Sugar blues.' We should go off it once in awhile. We should experience it more than a few times in our lives. At the very least, widdle it down. For some, way down.
Really. It's that good. Better than... Yes and with less time online there is more time for that too. Ehem.
And now as I sign off my digital readers, I wonder who reading this is my friend in real life or friend online. Whichever you are, I really truly hope you are planning to get offline soon, get out of the house and hug a real person. Those virtual hugs take too much time anyway, leave you with guilt trips if you don't send one back and don't feel as good as the real thing.
If we happen to meet out there, I welcome a real, live in person hug anytime.
p.s No, my x didn't "friend" me.
