Christine Rosen on Virtual Friendships And The New Narcissism

Christine Rosen does a pretty good job of cataloging all the shadows in the brightly lit world of social networking. Her conclusion makes her case pretty well:

[from The New Atlantis - Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism by Christine Rosen]

These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connection. As the young woman writing in the Times admitted, “I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com, and pokes on Facebook.” That she finds these online relationships more reliable is telling: it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails. Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.

There are myriad pitfalls in this open village, many of which she details:

1. break-ups are announced online by the jilted ex, leaving the other feeling exposed,
2. people can become entranced with the interactivity, and come to believe that have to remain connected at all times or they will miss something,
3. and by identifying themselves through lists of stuff -- music owned, books read, places visited, groups joined, people friended -- users can appear like magpies hoarding shiny bits of trash.

But these perceptions are largely the result of dissonance between the observers' esthetics and ethos and those that are emerging online.

Rosen and the many others of her ilk -- she quotes Michael Kinsley, who wrote in Slate that these online spaces are “vast celebrations of solipsism" -- begin with a well-articulated revulsion about the whole sticky mess, and then move on into claims of illegitimacy, in essence.

She throws a few barbed metaphors our way -- perhaps online networking is like the elaborate portraiture of the gilded age, perhaps it is unformed juveniles wallowing in their "protean selves", perhaps it's just an unwillingness to take on the risks of "real intimacy" -- all aligned to discredit the core experience of online involvement.

To indulge in a few unsupportable analogies myself, I could suggest (only to discredit her logic, mind) that because real-world friends sometime lie and hurt us, then friendship as an institution is questionable. Because students can become concerned with social status in schools, then schools should be disbanded, and all children should be home schooled. Some people become addicted to texting, so we should outlaw it. Since involvement in organized religion can lead to a decrease in non-religious activities, organized religion is basically negative. If you follow this course of reasoning, which is basically the sum of all fears, you are soon left with nothing.

Whenever people become involved in something, they leave something else behind. As people move online, hanging out with people there, they will spend less time hanging out with people in their physical neighborhoods. We know that as people spend more time online, there are spending less time watching television: a direct correlation. Is Rosen advocating that people should go back to watching more sitcoms?

No, this is another hidden call to a return to a mythical, fallen Golden Age, an echo in the minds of a leading sect of philosophers and pundits. We are clearly falling into a new dark age, they seem to say. We are losing touch with the old verities that underlie the 20th Century's bourgeois middle-class dreamtime, a way of life that involves consumerism, unconcern for the world as a whole, and a willingness to live in the small, through the nuclear family and a rigid allegiance to company, tribe, class, nation, religion. But it felt cozy to many, even though it alienated the rest.

Not all that move online for connection are consciously rejecting the inadequacy of industrial norms, but that is the undercurrent. We know it is not enough to chat with the same twenty people we work with, or the people we physically interact with every day. There is a larger world out there, and there is more in it than old school interaction can bring us.

David Weinberger introduced the term "continuous partial friendship" (derived from Linda Stone's derisive "continuous partial attention") as a way to indicate the looseness, but realness, of online connection. It may seem to be less, since it is partial, but the reality is that all friendship is discontinuous, even the realest of meatworld relationships. It is a matter only of scale. And I maintain that it is these tools that will allow us to scale friendship in new dimensions.

Leisa Reichelt writes of "ambient intimacy", a lovely and evocative term, that suggests that what we are gaining is a return to something lost: that third space -- neither home nor work -- where we can interact in a relaxed, egalitarian, and open way, with people from extremely different walks of life. This is not a portrait gallery, as Rosen asserts, but the corner cafe, or a pub, or playing checkers on the cracker barrel at the country store.

And of course we can't expect Rosen -- who is naysayer, albeit well-meaning -- to gain a personal sense of involvement by taking off her shoes, rolling up her pant legs, and to wade out into the flow. Too cold! Too wet! Too many risks!

Online interaction is increasingly a flow of small touches, brief quips, recommendations, updates, and inquiries. I maintain that you can't analyze your way to understanding how it all works, anymore than you can master the piano or martial arts analytically. You have to wade in it, maybe even wallow in it, to get it.

But those who live in a world of thought and will, who analyze their way through everything, are generally reluctant to wade in the water. It's easier to sit on the bank, telling stories of all those who skinned their shins on a rock, stepped on a frog, lost their way, slipped and drowned.

Yes, there are risks involved. Yes, people do jump headfirst into the shallows, and break their necks. And that may be enough to keep a lot of people out of the flow. But not the rest of us. Some of us live more through the skin than the brain, are pulled more than pushed, are more curious than cautious. It takes all kinds to keep it rich, even the reluctant and risk-averse.

Hey, Christine! Come on in. The water's fine.

[pointer from Basti Hirst]

Comments

[Pixieguts]

Interesting thoughts in this article. Thanks from a Last.fm 'addict' who lives in a real suburb in 'meatworld' (lol!), Brisbane Australia :)

[Andy Piper]

What a great, great post, Stowe. I think I'm going to be coming back to it time and time again... "Online interaction is increasingly a flow of small touches, brief quips, recommendations, updates, and inquiries" - yup... I just recommended this via del.icio.us to 4 people, 3 of whom I only know online; and via Twitter to a friend I've made also exclusively online through "touches" via Last.FM, Twitter, blogs etc., and who wrote on the same subject last week (as a result of another Twittered link...!).

I like the way you've pulled together the threads of continuous partial attention/friendship and ambient intimacy, here. It all fits very well.

[Dennis Howlett]

Stowe - it is an immutable law of relationship that at some point we will all let people down. To err is, after all, human. If we recognize that for the harsh reality it represents then it becomes a question of whether we have the capacity to forgive. Too few people realize that's what's required to sustain relationships of any kind.

[David Cushman]

Hi Stowe,
Powerful stuff. I understand where some of the negativity comes from. But none that is negative in social networking is new and exclusive to the online version.
And I thoroughly endorse your final sentiments - unless people actually touch the network they will never really understand its true value.

[Jasmin Tragas]

yes Stowe am definitely watching less TV the more I interact with others through social media and virtual communities. People are quick to criticise "wasted time in secondlife" and time spent blogging but don't think twice about hours spent in front of the idiot box, talking to no-one! Although I too question the authenticity of some personas and see the potential for personal online identity mismanagement. This is not the comfort zone for approval seekers. But I love it. I really do sense the world getting flatter, learning about others and appreciating the "givers" in this space. Thanks @andypiper for the del.icio.us link!

[Allison]

Wow, this is quite simply an amazing post. Thank you for so finely articulating what I have been trying to explain to others about this whole area of social networking. This is one I will be referencing often.

[John Eckman]

Very insightful Stowe - I came across Rosen's piece when she appeared on "talk of the nation" with Andy Carvin.

I think it is useful to look at where people come from in these debates - she's from the Ethics and Public Policy Center which describes itself as existing to "clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues."

In other words, a neoconservative organization reasserting the primacy of religion in daily life. Not that this explains why she's wrong as well as you have, but it helps place her argument and some of her expectations.