The digital world is pretty awesome for helping connect people like never before.
We can connect with strangers who share an obscure interest thanks to a crazy sub-reddit or a Facebook group. We can find friends we’ve lost from many years ago. We can see behind the scenes with our professional colleagues and get to know them better as people.
But that’s not always sunshine and roses.
One of the biggest challenges of this frictionless connectivity is the habit we’re cultivating for perceived intimacy.
Just because I know you from a Facebook group doesn’t mean I really know you. I understand a bit about your interests maybe, but that’s an ocean of difference from knowing someone’s heart and mind.
Because we’re colleagues and you see that I’m tweeting about my kid’s riding lesson, I’m not necessarily welcoming you to comment on that (or am I? That I suppose is debatable)?
I can click a button without a second thought, but in the analog world, getting to know someone requires a lot more than being in the same room with them, or having a single thing in common.
It’s more and more common for people to feel a little overstepped, a little invaded, a little bit like people are assuming too much friendship and familiarity when their only commonality is knowing the same people on LinkedIn.
Let’s make each other a promise.
While digital connections become a significant part of our reality, let’s give them a bit more respect. I love that they remove the barriers of geography and circumstance from our ability to know one another. But I don’t love that they make some of us feel as though we’re entitled to a trust and an intimacy that we did not earn.
Whether it’s sending emails or connecting via text or gathering offline, there’s still some basic matters of courtesy and decency to follow. Be polite. Ask permission. Show some respect. Never assume.
By all means, connect with one another. But let’s recognize that trust and friendship and familiarity are still things that are earned through time and investment and reciprocation, not things that are granted immediately upon a click.
And let’s act accordingly.
As someone you barely know but am a Facebook “friend” and have commented on things like your daughter’s riding lessons, I guess I would like to clarify whether you think that it’s ok or not to make inane comments on personal activities when you’ve been allowed into the false intimacy that is FB friends.
I do get that there are still various layers of friendship and that one should temper their level of reaction to the level of perceived friendship much like they would in an office or networking environment when personal information is shared. That is a good reminder.
And I do agree that it’s rude when people you don’t know well get angrily argumentative in your space about an opinion you’ve expressed through a post or tweet. Are are you saying that, because of that possibility, there are some public posts that should not be commented on at all by people who are considered acquaintances? Or are you cautioning people not to put into the public space things that they don’t want invite comment or reaction from?
I think I probably should have phrased my comment differently.
What I mean is: Comment on my kid’s riding lesson? Sure. I shared it, knowing full well it was public. But COMMENTARY on whether my kid should be riding, my parenting choices, whether it’s appropriate for me to be putting my kid on a horse…would you say those things to me in person if we knew each other only over the internet?
I think what happens – and the distinction I’m trying to draw – is that people have a couple of interactions with you on a FB comment thread and think that now they’re welcome to ask questions or provide subjective input on things that would be considered rude, inappropriate, or presumptuous in offline company.
Does that help?
Great perspective, Amber and I really am anxious to hear your opinion on Kim’s question.
Steve, see above. 🙂