Virtual Friendship

Technology has certainly changed the way we do communication, and hence, friendship.  Ten years ago, there was no such things as IM.  Twenty years ago, we had no idea what email was.  Twenty-five years ago most people would stare at you blankly if you talked about using a mobile phone.  Thirty years ago, many people, at least in rural areas, still had party lines.

I could go on, but I suspect I have already lost some of you.  Party lines?  Like coke?  No, like you shared a phone line with your neighbours.  You only answered the phone when it was your ring.  Unless, of course, you wanted to find out the latest gossip.  But if you didn't want them to know you were listening in, you'd better be quiet!  Oh, and you actually had to dial, on a round thing.  No such thing as pushing buttons.

And back then, we wrote letters.  You had pen pals.  You took a pen or pencil, handwrote your letter on a piece of paper (you usually tried to find something nice), put it in an envelope, addressed and stamped it, and put it in the mailbox.  Of course, this is why I was never a very good pen pal.  Most of the time I would get to the writing part.  I would even usually put the letter in an envelope and address it.  That stamp thing, and getting it to the post office though, that's another story.  There were many letters that got thrown out (there was no such thing as recycling) because they were outdated.  Some just got stashed away.  When I was packing to move last summer, I came across quite a few letters that I had written.  Some were from college.  Some as far back as high school.  They just never got sent.

Quite often, after meeting someone, at camp say, you would exchange addresses and write back and forth, and that was when you really got to know each other.  Sometimes you had pen pals that you had never met.  I can't remember how that all worked, but I think that in magazines, people could leave little tidbits about themselves along with their address (and sometimes accompanied by a picture), and you could write to them.  After writing back and forth, you might make plans to actually meet each other.  Yes, it was a very different world.  You didn't worry about addresses getting into the wrong hands and giving out personal information.  Of course, a lot of those addresses were box numbers, so I guess you'd be reasonably hard to track down.  And if some creepy person was hovering around the post office all day, just waiting for you to pick up your mail, someone was bound to notice and do something about it.

Sometimes I marvel at how things have changed, and yet haven't.  For example, we still write to people we don't know and develop friendships with them after reading tidbits about them (and usually seeing their picture).  But we don't have to use pens, paper, envelopes, stamps or mailboxes.  At least not real ones.  We simply sign into our Facebook accounts and send them a message.  Or write on their walls.  If you get to know them well enough, you might actually meet.  And you can do this all without leaving your house.  (This is probably why I'm much better at maintaining connections now.)

The thing is, it's so easy to connect to people that we tend to connect to lots.  I have 549 "friends" on Facebook.  I have met most of them.  I could probably delete at least half of them without either of us really noticing.  I don't.  Mostly because it takes too much effort.  Partly because I do communicate with most of them at least once a year.  Partly because I have a hard time getting rid of things - even FB friends.

In some ways, this mass connection has made it easy to form shallow relationships.  At the same time, it hasn't really changed the way I do the friend thing.  I have always known lots of people.  There were very few people that I went to school with - grade school and college - whose names I did not know.  And if I didn't know, I asked.  I had a few close friends - people that I could talk to about anything.  People that I would hang out with.

I still have a few close friends.  One of them, Kim, was a friendship largely built through FB.  I really couldn't give you the details of the evolution of our friendship, but I do know that I can trust her with anything.  I know she's a ton of fun.  And we even hang out sometimes.

That "hanging out" component.  That's what I miss.  It's easier to sit in front of a computer screen and chat with five different people at once than actually get together with those people.  (Besides, they probably don't know each other at all anyway - except through your status comments, that is.)  Online has its benefits, but I miss just being with people.

When I was newly married, there were five of us who got together pretty much every Friday to have a games night.  We had so much fun - talking, laughing, competing.  I don't do that anymore.  I'd love to get together with a core group of friends.  I think people still do that on occasion.  Somewhere, that aspect of life escaped me.

I have also noticed that we seem to have developed an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mindset.  I think this is another product of social networking.  We get used to commenting on status lines and pictures.  We talk to the people we see.  We don't sit down and think, "Hmmm...I haven't talked to so-and-so for awhile now.  Perhaps I'll pick up the phone and give her a call to see how she's doing."  If we don't see them -either physically or virtually - we don't talk.

I have sometimes wondered, if I dropped off the face of the Earth, how long would it take before someone noticed?  Would I ever get a message asking how things were?  Would someone take the time to give me a call?  Would they even be able to find my phone number?

Similarly, would I notice if one of my friends disappeared?  To be sure, there are some I check up on regularly, even if they don't make it onto my current FB home page.  But there are many who could completely vanish and I would never know.  I probably would not bother to make the phone call.  And I probably don't have their phone numbers.  And I don't really like talking on the phone anymore.  Except for sometimes.  And to some people.

But then, is this really any different?  In years past, prior to all our technology, how many people would we have noticed if we hadn't heard from them lately?  Four?  Five?  (Not including family - my mom can tell you exactly when she last talked to each of us.)  About the same number I would notice disappearing now.

So, I guess the old adage is true - the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I think I'll go call someone...