One of my favorite techniques as a
writer - and a human - is dropping into the middle of conversations
that are ongoing; the simple act of doing so leaves the new arrival
(me) -- or the reader (you in the case where I have been writing and
that's the mechanism by which we begin our narrative) almost
entirely at the mercy of the conversation -- because that's real
life.
Relations among humans are often messy,
but are usually worth the effort -- especially transactions that take
place under the umbrella of words that - whether in our real or in
our digital lives - include willing sacrifices and commitment of
emotions.
Of course these gestures are never as
cut-and-dried or as seemingly bloodless as the reasonable facsimile
thereof that we use to represent the often emotional set of
attachments we seek to transplant (or at the least mimic) in the
online worlds of social media. Yeah.
To be clear here, and in spite of what
is implied above, I am not speaking of any type of the use of
the word “Love” as it is bandied about all willy-nilly whenever
the R-Word (Relationship) is raised - even as I use the words
Friendship or Mateship - which as any human can quickly explain is
the seed of the root of the plant that must eventually become Love,
if it is properly nurtured and allowed to expre4ss itself as the
guiding emotional principles around which all relationships form.
One does not spring fully formed as a
lover without first starting out as a mare or friend, as from the
collective friend or mate the dynamics of partner is formed. That
potential is there - always - whether one is prepared to accept it or
not. But I do not speak of those words or relations with the same
breath as the other.
Neither am I referring to any of the
four basic words in Ancient Greek that can be translated into the
English word “Love” and through which most writers rely (even
when they are not aware that they in fact are relying upon them) --
those being the érōs (directly translated for and from
"love" or "desire") or, for that
matter, storge, philia, and especially agape,
all of which lend their own special (and often times obscene in the
end) shades to the words.
I do understand and acknowledge that
among the formative influences that combined and conspire to form my
own understanding and projection of those twin concepts
subconsciously include Heinlein, Lawrence, Bacon, Chaucer, and even
O'Brian.
I am therefore specifically NOT
speaking of the sort of positioning or the use of that word or any of
its many and varied associated cousins that, upon examination, either
lend to the projection the twin concepts of emotional and physical
connections. Love. Not!
What I am referencing here is the much
more pure and universal relationship that in Canada and the United
States goes by the word “Friendship” and in places like Australia
and New Zealand over-utilize the phrase mateship.
Where Love of the Eros sort generally
refers to "passionate love" or “romantic love” that we
all of us are quick to understand -- as after all how could the
entire genre of Love Story and its plethora of sub-genres that I like
to refer to as the bodice-ripping rape-me-to-show-you-love-me sort of
stories of Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts and the likes of Judith
McNaught that I strongly suspect are responsible in no small way for
the confusion that many men (and women for that matter) feel towards
the non-committal use of the word “No” -- but that's an entirely
different story and verbal proposition! For the record I believe
that “No!” means “No!”
So all of that qualified, let it be
known that I strongly believe that the beginning of THIS story - this
article - and this question - is best summarized as the proposition
of the Friend. Friends? Friended? Friend Me? Like? Unlike?
It is a long and complicated path we
have embarked upon when that measure of complication is our topic.
In fact we are better served by declaring what we DO NOT mean when we
use the words Friend or Mate than we are in trying to
complete the impossible task of finding a way to define what we DO
mean by those words and especially when the objective is their
definition in a single neat paragraph.
MATE /
FRIEND ships
Eros love is the physical, sensual
intimacy hoped to exist between the husband and the wife - the set of
noteworthy and powerful forces conjured into being through the
largely speculative spiritual transformation of two physically
opposite human forms that, despite the usual physical compatibility
are nevertheless largely a combination of desires and necessity.
That's one end of the palpable spectrum
that is part of Friendship IRL. The other end can be found in a
space that begins with casual friendships and progresses from there.
So let's close that first chapter with an understanding, and open a
new chapter in which we contrast and compare two very basic realities
whose nature comes full-circle and back to the original thoughts,
which are marked by two very different highs and lows: that being the
loss of friendship / mateship that occurs in both real-world and
real-life compared to that which occurs online.
The fascinating part though is that
while it may seem like it naturally would amount to mostly the same
thing, as it turns out how deep or damaging unfriending someone
online can be has almost everything to do with the site and its
ranking in the hierarchy of social networks, with a spectrum that
starts at the far left with trivial and meaningless, and concludes,
at the far right, with the unfriended feeling a measure of hurt and
betrayal many are shocked and surprised to feel when it happens to
them!
MATEship
/ FRIENDship
Recently - and with something of an
“in-your-face” and unapologetic attitude - I sat with one of my
real-world friends in the dining room at the Wareham Red Robin (which
is as close as you are going to get to a gourmet burger on Cape Cod -
though technically Wareham is NOT on the Cape) and we talked about
the feelings that were provoked when you logged into your regular
social networks only to discover that you had been unfriended by
someone.
I should point out that a trip to RR is
a rather special event. You see, heaven in a Red Robin begins with a
“bottomless” Very Berry Raspberry Limeade (if you're from New
England then you can think of this as a Raspberry/Lime Ricky but
yeah), and some shared Baja Dip 'N' Chips -- crispy sea salt tortilla
chips served with Red's zesty Baja Ranch dressing for to dip them in.
Spreading out from there is a Red Robin
Gourmet Cheeseburger -- built with Red's pickle relish, tomatoes,
onions, lettuce, pickles, mayo and extra cheese, accompanied by a
heaping dish of `golden brown O-Rings dipped into more of Red's
zesty Baja Ranch dressing.
See the thing is, if you have lived on
Cape Cod for very long you already know that with the exception of
Surf N' Turf, the options for good restaurant food in the armpit of
the Cape is down to either ethnic or fast.
We consider RR to be what you'd call
medium-fast with an emphasis upon gourmet burgers and, well, they
aren't kidding about the fact that their offerings fall neatly into
the category of gourmet burgers! The point being that in this case
it actually is worth going slightly off-Cape to get 'em because Red
Robin falls well above Johnny Rockets or Wahlburgers.
The real point to this though is that
it is not the usual meal, but one enjoyed among friends. And as
that's the theme for this, Red Robin is a great place to start -
because we had gathered there to chat about the whole online and
social networking friendships and the subject as it contrasts with
IRL friendships.
That’s a fair point. Especially when
you consider that, no matter what happens, once the topic of this
piece turns towards the online and digital realm, somebody's going to
get hurt.
Offline vs. Online
Generally speaking the initial (almost
instant) conclusion to the question of valuation was that the biggest
difference between befriending someone and unfriending someone both
IRL and OL is the lingering point that the event, when it happens
Online, is simply not the same thing at all.
When it happens IRL it is often
accompanied by those awkward silences and ugly confrontations that
hurt - and the fact that usually there are good reasons for the event
happening, on the face of it you might think that the two do not
compare at all.
IRL the usual causes range from
betrayals (both real and imagined), cheating, and often issues that
are created either by other mates or relatives that lead to the
decision by one party to undertake an action that ultimately causes
emotional (and often times physical) pain to the other.
For most blokes this sort of event is
relatively rare. Friends work through their issues, they don't burn
bridges without really good reasons to do it.
But that makes sense when you consider
that IRL Friends are rare animals indeed in the relationships
spectrum. That they often require and are made yup of the same sorts
of effort that relationships of a more personal and intimate nature
occupy - because created a friendship is generally viewed as worthy
of that level of effort.
That outlook may be related to the fact
that, according to recent research conducted at both Harvard and Yale
has revealed that the typical human actually has fewer mates/friends
than they think they do! Which is to say that many of the people
that they believe are their friends don't recipricate that level of
either familiarity or bond.
Online “Friends”
“In the world OL becoming Friends is
just a button click,” one of my mates pointed out. “That being
the case, it really doesn't have any meaning. You Friend someone
maybe to add them to your feed so you can see what they are doing or
what they are interested in because they belong to a group YOU belong
to, or are interested in some narrow hobby or subject YOU are
interested in, but that is as far as it goes. For you.
Oddly though, it seems that for a lot
of people -- and this is especially true on venues like Facebook --
your action of “Friending” a person can and often does have more
meaning for the person you friended than it does for you!
So experiencing a person who befriended
you suddenly and without comment or explanation unfriending you can
be a jarring and, some even claim, hurtful event.
One aspect that is very clear and that
lends focus to the phenomenon is where the action takes place. both
different and similar depending on WHERE the breakup is going to
happen.
A case can be made that a Facebook
breakup and a LinkedIn Breakup are pretty much at opposite ends of
the spectrum. Or so it might appear to you. It may be fair to
consider the middle zone to be pretty much everything from SnapChat
to Xbox LIVE and PSN or Steam Mates, but are you aware that the
social network side of platforms like YouTube have now reached the
point where creators on that platform feel like you befriending them
there and viewing their content is a declaration of friendship beyond
simply being a consumer of the product that they are creating?
Social Network Sites that have somehow
generated feelings by their users that they are in fact communities
and, by befriending a creator/user thereon you are in effect being
perceived as offering a sincere overture of real friendship to the
extent that withdrawing that button click - to them - would be
construed as anything starting with rejection and ranging up to a
hostile even attacking act?
According to recent surveys that were
conducted online the users and/or creators on the following social
network constructs have begun to view the “following” actions of
subscribing to their feed or channel in similar terms. In short,
withdrawing your “friendship” and/or subscribed status on the
following sites may be seen as a hostile act by most of the people
who use them - and the higher on the list below that the social
network site is, the stronger that feeling of rejection may actually
be!
According to the most recent (April
2016) surveys the Top 10 “clingy” SM sites include:
- YouTube
- Google+
- Tumblr
- AboutMe
If Vine wasn't shutting down it would
have made the list - but lower down than the Top 10. The point being
that even losing a sub on a dying site could trigger the same
feelings of rejection and pain that is found on other sites - which
is rather odd when you pause to consider that technically for most of
the SN and SM sites whatever the actual relationship is that exists
between the subs and the creators really is simply one of content
consumer, not friend.
Despite this trending phenom most
netziens consuming content created by others don't consider or
imagine that any other relationship exists - when they consider the
idea of a relationship at all... So at least in this case, saying
It's YOU, not ME would be painfully accurate, but that's unlikely to
change the way that these creators actually feel.
It may be cliche, but the originally
amusing and meme-worthy contents of the video embedded above as well
as its own tongue-in-cheek humor takes on a much more sinister shadow
when the emotional over-attachment is suddenly found on the opposite
side of the camera so to speak.
When You Are Breaking Up With Them
Whether it is -- as many people prefer
to frame it - euphemistically little more than a combination of
Spring Cleaning / Removing Noise from the Signal /or just simply
Pruning Dead Wood - the point is that the people that are being
chucked into the bin are not usually people the chucker actually
knows IRL because hey, the words “Friend” and “Mate” have
entirely different meanings in the Online Realm. Right? Well yes,
except when they don't.
It really does not matter how you
phrase it -- Spring Cleaning; Weeding the Friend Space; Unfriending,
De-Friending -- I know some netziens who call it De-Cluttering -- at
this point the chances that removing a Subscribe or Friend Status on
any of the above sites will offend at least some users is a near
certainty.
What's the Deal?
I recently experienced this phenomenon
first hand and I found it to be very very disturbing.
I was playing the Freemium Game The
Simpsons: Tapped Out - and when I realized thanks to the need to
interact with the towns of “neighbors” (that is what passes for
“Friends” in that game) that a large chunk of the people who were
on my Neighborhoods list were not actively playing the game - many of
them had not logged in to play in over a year - so I started pruning
the ones that were not playing.
The reason that I did that was simple -
the players who WERE playing the game were as useful to me as I was
to them, but that was not true for the people no longer playing, so I
systematically de-friended any player who had not logged into the
game for more than 2 months.
Having found myself “servicing” the
social side in that game prompted me to look at other sites that I
was active on, and doing the same basic tasks there - weeding out the
people who eitther were not active or were not participants to the
process.
In the past I have had people do the
same with me - and I never took it personally. After all these sites
- and games - are not popularity contests. In many cases - and this
is especially true with free-to-play games - having a more active
friend base benefits the players - I completely understood how and
why other players opted to defriend ME on certain games. Totally
understood it.
Which is why I was flabbergasted when I
received email from several people asking me what it was that they
had done wrong to cause me to sever our friendships?
So how do you respond to the hurt
feelings of a “friend” you have never actually met or even talked
with outside of in-game interactions for games they are no longer
actively playing?! Facebook’s ripe with that sort of event it
seems. But it did not stop there.
I quit several groups I was no longer
active in on LinkedIn and received similar mail from their hosts
either asking what they did wrong or demanding to know what my
problem was with them?!
The biggest mind-blowing event though -
and what caused me to start looking into this - was the dogged and
persistent manner in which a particular YouTuber pursued me after I
unsubscribed from their channel...
Shortly after I unsubscribed they
messaged me to ask why I left? I replied that I was thinning out my
subs for the channels that I no longer regularly viewed. That was
the truth, though I thought it odd that they asked in the first
place.
But then the messaged me to point out
that I was still subscribed to a similar channel which belonged to a
different creator who covered the same subjects and they demanded to
know what it was that the other creator was doing that caused me to
stay subscribed to them?
Things got stranger and stranger after
that, and it soon became evident that they were hurt or maybe miffed
at my action, and the only thing I could do that they considered
proper and right was to re-sub to their channel. That, they
explained, was just fair.
Then they told me that I really didn't have the right to have an opinion on what channel on the subject was better than another because I was not a YouTube Creator, and told me that the only legitimate reply I could make had to be via a YouTube video... Really?
My reaction was to start looking into
this phenomenon because, well, I don't know abotu fair or right but
this? This is just freaking bizarre!
