So-shall Not-work

Social Networking has brought us an inch closer to everyone in our periphery, but has flung us miles apart from the people closest to us.

The concept of "being close" has inexorably changed. No longer does it mean hours gabbing on the phone about your innermost thoughts and insights, no long, humorous emails belabored over, no quiet lunches spent recounting what happened to you during the week.

These things don't really matter anymore. If someone attempts to catch up with me, let me know what they thought about during the week, the places they go/people they see...I'll say "oh, right, you mentioned that on Facebook". "Catching Up" is an outdated social convention that has gone the way of Print Media and Betamax.

"Here are pictures of my kids! Aren't they cute?" yeah, I've already seen your kids on Flickr and they look like every other kid I've seen on Flickr. And that video you uploaded of them on youtube doing that thing that 1,000,000,000 other kids do on youtube...saw that too.

Do I get to see the kid in person? Not a chance. I'm busy and I feel like I'm keeping up with him because you just Twittered "my baby is brilliant! he can clap his hands!!!" Is he brilliant? Is he just doing something that every other baby in history has done? I'll never know.

We find out that people are pregnant the second they find out they're pregnant, we find out people are getting married as they're being proposed to: "OMG! Bill just proposed! What should I say?"...cue impromptu comments-section Facebook poll.

So while it's great I know what all my high school friends look like now....it's also a pretty big drawback that I know what all my high school friends look like now. Sure, they "pop up in my feed" and it's great that I can keep up with their thoughts and what's going on...but because of this, I will never feel the need to call them, email them or...*gasp*...attend my high school reunion.

I am not the only one who feels this way; 2 people showed up to my 10 year class reunion this past year. I remember at my 5 year reunion, the 10 year was packed (well, as packed as it could get for an 80 kid graduating class)! Time has changed; no longer is seeing someone in person revelatory, no longer a prerequisite for keeping in touch.

"Who got fat?" "Who got married?" "Who stands outside a middle school, clad in jodhpurs, stroking a giant sack of potatoes while screaming 'Jesus is Lord!'?" We already know the answers.

So while social networking makes it "pretty awesome" (sarcastic quotes intended) that I can keep in touch with pretty much every single jackass I tangentially meet at a party; it's pretty un-awesome that it's also the only way I seem to be able to keep in touch with people I care about.

It also makes it seemingly impossible to put myself in a situation to get close to jackasses that I tangentially meet at a party: perhaps what's written in their profile turns me off, perhaps it's because their status goes in my feed and I am able to keep up with them, so I have no need to try and find out more about the person, perhaps it's because they belong to a Facebook group called "Require Drug Tests For Welfare"...either way, bringing us close in this way is distancing.

So maybe it's worth not status-updating for a week, no @replying today...just sit down and think to yourself: who do I actually want to talk to?

Pick up a phone and find out something more about a person than can be summarized in a 140 character witticism. Pretend like you care about their stupid ugly baby, because you were once a stupid ugly baby and your parents had friends that pretended like they cared.