The ShenBot

I admit it – my post is late this week. I meant to do it before I took off for New York on Friday, but … alas, I did not. I’ve been doing a lot of general musings this past week – some about news pieces, some about the final project, some having nothing to do with class but more my non-online life and how much more difficult offline relationships are than online ones (trite? yes. fitting? sure.). One funny note from last weeks’ blogs that I could not ignore – Comcast made nice with BitTorrent the same week that a Second Life related lawsuit surfaced having to do with the copyrighting of virtual genitalia and virtual sexual maneuvers. It’s one of those things that makes you look around to see if anyone else saw what you saw and then make you scratch your head in wonder.

Anyhoo, back to my major musings for the week. As you all know, I have been a little pre-occupied with the idea of kids going online and how the online space is influencing their lives as it pertains to relationships with their peers. One interesting bit of information I gathered from my original conversation with my 9-year-old cousin was that when she wants to interact with her friends online, she talks to them about it first offline. Meaning, they’ll either make a plan to go online later in Club Penguin or Webkinz, or she will call them up and ask if they want to meet her online. What is striking to me about this is that there is still a distinction about the online life and the offline life, and to her there is still more value in that offline relationship (and I gathered this based on the fact that she doesn’t just try to engage her friends through digital means – she still picks up the phone and calls).

I, like Erin, was also intrigued with Facebook’s newest featured rolled out this week (the LinkedIn-esque “you may know this person” feature) and had the exact same reaction – it’s not that I didn’t know those people I may know weren’t on Facebook…because of the nature of the past relationships, both parties have up until this point decided not to engage the other. However, that isn’t to say there aren’t people I am friends with on Facebook and MySpace who I have not seen or spoken to in ten + years or who I have had tenuous relationships with (either presently or in the past).

But … which of these two scenarios is genuinly more reflective of what “reality” is even in a virtual state? I almost feel like by not engaging certain people who I actually do know but would prefer not to associate with on Facebook is ignoring reality – some of those people I interract with in my offline world and have to come face-to-face with them on a daily basis … why should I be able to avoid it online. Of course there are people on these sites who we are friends with who really do fall into a different era of our lives – people we knew in elementary school who we haven’t seen in 20 years … but we’re friends online. If online is becoming more of a reality, shouldn’t we in theory then still be friends offline?

I also got to thinking about how societally we are starting to rely on common web tools to alleviate the normal stress of relationships and not just communication in general. We all know that email has allowed millions and millions of people to keep in touch and maintain relationships that may have lost course had we only still had phones/letters. But I ask – if those relationships weren’t strong enough to overcome letters and phone calls, is it a relationship worth saving? Or - how meaningful is wishing someone “Happy Birthday” when all one needs to do is type it into someone’s wall on Facebook – is that person genuinly wishing another a Happy Birthday or is it something we feel we need to do based on these relationships we’ve forged online? What does it mean when a true, deeply routed friend stops calling or emailing and starts only communicating via Facebook? Are we getting to the point in time where we’re even too lazy to send an email? But then, even I sent someone an email tonight that maybe … just maybe … should have been said in a phone conversation or better yet in person. But it was too difficult and emotional – so even I used the crutch that is the web to alleviate the stress and emotion of what could have been a face-to-face encounter. Is this really making us stronger more efficient people or are we becoming weaker and less able to manage everyday relationships, conflict and stress because we don’t have to?

That was the gist of my musing for the week. But, on a side note, I am also feeling frustrated because I fear the main idea I want to tackle for my main project needs more time to be mused-out than I have before it’s due. So, I am still musing but am also thinking of some backup ideas.

I’d love to know people’s thoughts on any of this – anyone having similar situations with the final project? Anyone annoyed at Facebook?