Reach Out and Grope Someone
Posted on | November 9, 2007 at 6:54 am | 13 Comments
Got this from InfK a few days ago:
Speaking of alternate channels of communication, let me suggest a blog post topic for your next slow-news-day – how do folks keep in touch these days? For years, amongst my peeps, “everyone” was on AoL-IM (and to an extent, the Usenet newsgroup that bound us all together). Then, suddenly, “everyone” sprouted a blog or even a Myspace page. Nowadays just a small fraction of people I know still use IM, newsgroup traffic is zero thanks to trolls, and there’s just a few blogs still being updated – yours more than most! The wife and I are switching from Email to shared Google Notebook pages (via the handy Firefox extension), since it’s been inconvenient to use IM from our respective dayjobs this past couple years, or we just use SMS when away from computers (needless (?) to say, I’ve never been a fan of voice phonecalls for casual conversation)
So I’m wondering what folks outside my circle of friends, such as YOUR circle of friends, use to keep in touch with THEIR respective circles of… well, you get the idea.
Thanks, InfK. Here’s my answer:
I don’t keep in touch with my friends, at least not lately. I’m very bad about that. I blame it on a number of factors, but mostly it’s just too many things taking up my time and mental energy.
I don’t like talking on the phone, and pretty much the only person I do that with regularly is the gf and my younger sister.
Snail mail? I’ll send a card out occasionally.
I’ve never been into instant messaging or chat rooms or text messaging. The newsgroup days are long past. Online multiplayer games are not my thing, but I do have some friends who are into that. Twitter seems too self-indulgent to me. I’d post videos of myself to YouTube if I didn’t think they would make people throw up.
I’ve been on an Internet mailing list for fans of a particular band for 14 years or so, but there’s not much traffic there any more and I certainly don’t contribute much. It used to be a very vital part of my informational and social circle, and many things beyond the band were discussed there, but in recent years it has fallen victim to several problems. I think the main reason that traffic slowed down and people quit is just because they found other avenues of communication (like blogs), but it certainly didn’t help that the list was hijacked on and off by a particularly strong personality who wants to use the list mainly to get attention and talk about himself (he really needs a blog). That sent people fleeing in droves, including a lot of “oldtimers”. I stick around for the occasional good new music suggestions and just because it’s been a part of my life for so long that I have trouble giving it up. But it’s not any kind of factor in my life.
I do keep in touch with some of the friends I’ve made through that list via private e-mail and other means. I suppose e-mail is my primary communication conduit, but even that I’ve slacked off on the last year or so.
So, really, you’re looking at it. I use this blog to keep people informed of what I’m up to, even if I don’t get too explicit in a publicly accessible forum. And I do it to keep exercising my writing and creative muscles. I depend on the blogs of my friends to keep me updated on their lives. Blog comments are the new Chat Rooms. Though there may be a bit of a blog/MySpace backlash going on right now (or maybe Facebook is just overshadowing them), I think these types of things are here to stay. They will continue to evolve as we shy types seek new ways to avoid F2F social interactions. Pretty soon I’m going to start telepathically transmitting my emotional state to everyone on my Verizon Friends and Family Plan, but I’m waiting for the technical infrastructure to catch up with the fantasy.
How about the rest of you? Especially those of you who have other circles of friends besides this one.
Jogged Today: No, still fighting off a virus or something.
Today’s Weight: 162.6 lbs
Lunch Yesterday: Yankee Pot Roast sandwich at Club 404.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Yearly benefits enrollment. I can’t begin to describe the problems my company is undergoing trying to get this going this year. And of course the available health plans are geared more toward saving money for the company and the insurance company (mandatory deductibles, etc). Things are changing…
Latre.
Comments
13 Responses to “Reach Out and Grope Someone”
November 9th, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
My primary method of communicating with friends is intending to call/email. When I succeed, the other party and I typically re-ignite our bond of friendship by moaning about how we’re too busy to stay in better touch. I have better success just running into friends around town. Not while driving, of course. And while I never exactly thought about it in this way before, I realize my having become close friends with several coworkers may have in small part to do with the friendship-building potential of actual regular/daily in-person contact. Oh, and I got a Facebook account which I intend to check more frequently.
November 9th, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
I’ve tried telephonics, email, nothing seems to work. I’ve found that I really don’t like phones, and email takes time to compose, and when you let huge gaps of time pass, its real hard to get caught up. Then when you do get caught up and vow to stay in touch, Bam! another freakin’ Death March. (Ask BtGH. He pinged me right after you made me and I promised to get him caught up right after this current March ended, which I thought would be two weeks ago. Hasn’t ended.)
I must say, though, I think I like the blog idea the best — Like we’ve had more interaction through FlasshePoint in the past couple of months than we have since Boulder. I don’t know what it is about this forum, but it seems pretty — comfortable? not sure that’s the right word, but its close. I’ve been wanting to put one up, and in fact had one for a while but it went away due to technical difficulties when we moved. I haven’t re-created it because I now have to pay for it and I’m in a stingy mood. (Remodeling a house will do that.)
I’ve also been experimenting with Flickr, although no one knows about that yet so I don’t know how that will work.
November 9th, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
Of course, Flasshe, you already know how I keep in touch with my friends – or at least, that circle of them that includes you. (It was amusing to read about that mailing list situation, couched in a way that made it comprehensible to people not involved, when I left the same mailing group for the same reasons you note for its decline…) I too am not a telephone fan – too real-time, and who says my time overlaps with yours? And my local friends are either superbusy most of the time or homebodies (we’re guilty of both at times, too). This basically means my friends are the people who e-mail me. If one or the other of us stops e-mailing, the friendship declines. Not terminally: I’ve got some old friends who don’t e-mail me often who, nevertheless, manage to keep in touch, either by the occasional e-mail or occasional, in-person visit. (This country’s just too damned large.) One problem is that neither of my workplaces is all that conducive to forming friendships, for very different reasons. My main one, the university, doesn’t work because I’m there very few hours, and those hours are spent in the classroom teaching. There’s not a lot of hanging-around time, partly because there’s no place to park long-term, so everyone comes and goes rapidly around their scheduled class times. My other job employs very few people, almost all of whom are part-time, and none of them are really likely to become actual friends because the sort of sociological/interest-profile is too different.
November 10th, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
Janet’s got a Facebook account!
Gregory, I really want to see your Flickr site!
November 10th, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
One problem is that neither of my workplaces is all that conducive to forming friendships, for very different reasons.
This is the first job I’ve worked at where there wasn’t a lot of after-hours fraternization going on (i.e. Friday Happy Hours and such). I think part of that is just that as people grow older, they get more tried and have families they just want to get home to. I can definitely see that happening to myself. Also, though I like my co-workers a lot, we don’t really seem to have a lot in common outside of work. Actually, when I first started with this employer, I was working for a different group and I did frequently socialize with my co-workers and others in the company. But then the group got broken up, people started doing their own things, and many people left the company. Now I don’t even work at the same location as most of the ones who are left.
November 10th, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
“Gregory, I really want to see your Flickr site!”
Sure:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loudguineapig
November 11th, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
I started a MySpace page last week, and now it’s so yesterday, huh? That figures. But it’s OK. I’ve hooked up with some old friends I’d lost track of, and blogging is kinda neat.
That internet mailing list you mentioned is really sad now. Practically, umm… Stapled shut, eh? It was a huge part of a lot of our lives for a long time Do you ever miss those Sunday chats?
November 11th, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
Like, Gregory, I’ve certainly had more communications with our host since I’ve found his blog here than I’ve had in I don’t know how long.
To out myself in short, I don’t keep in touch with people. I’ve noticed this for a long time, and tried to change this, regretting losing touch.
The email era has improved the situation a bit, because it is so easy to do w/o risking disturbing either side’s current schedules. However, trying to write those little “Hi, how’s it going? Great to talk to you. Let’s keep in touch.” messages has really pointed out to myself my underlying problem: contextual relationships.
I have relationships with people based almost entirely on the the context(s) we share and rarely (like essentially never) venture on to issues of greater human concern. So, once the context, work, school, hobby, isn’t shared anymore, I have nothing left to say. There is just an uncomforable silence or (as Host F could tell you about me) stale reminiscences of The Good Old Days.
Therein lies a good point about blogs, personal blogs at least, which is the creation of an ongoing context, disconnected from some external force, other than the life of the host and to an extent the “guests”.
[A veritable rambling train wreck of a comment. This is why I generally don't converse on noncontextual topics.]
November 11th, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
Dan, I certainly look back fondly at those Sunday night IRC sessions, when I used to catch up with friends, feel comepltely ignorant when it came to discographies and music knowledge, wrestle with Trillian and shaky Internet connections, and flirt shamelessly with the guy I wound up convincing to live with me.
I feel such enduring affection for the original listmembers, but I don’t think I could sustain the posting and email conversations and chats at my age now. I just feel thankful for everythng the community educated me about, the real-life friendships that it made possible, and the chance to meet and get to know someone I want to make homemade applesauce for and spend the rest of my life with.
November 11th, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
I’m very grateful for the community we had. And it’s still there, when it needs to be. I was pleased to see so many folks from the old days rally around Flasshe a few weeks ago.
November 11th, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
I miss those chat days also, Dan, but just found it hard to make time for them after awhile.
Bill, despite the rambling, I do understand your comments and agree with most of them.
November 12th, 2007 @ 4:34 am
So basically, we’re all getting older and have less energy to waste on those pesky “other” people… well, it figures.
Certainly our social life doesn’t hold a candle to what it was even 2 years ago, but there are a lot of big reasons why, and we’re still actually in touch with a lot of folks in one way or other – it’s just not as simple as it used to be. And if I was to try and rope a bunch of them onto some new service or medium, I wondered what other grownups are using these days once the MySpace kiddies have gone out clubbing and freed up the phone lines… thanks for the input, gang, and for the bully pulpit Rogj!
November 12th, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
I only did the chat things once or twice: what I found unsatisfying was it was either sitting around forever waiting for someone/anyone to type something, or four conversations at once, none of which you could follow. Plus, it just demanded too much real-time attention. It’s just not how I use the intarwebs…