The Internet Complicates Everything
Some of you know that I was seeing a girl for just about two months.
Was.
No sympathy, gang. We had a good run, and we’re friends, and I’m only bringing it up to exemplify a point.
I was talking to Sarah about the breakup last night. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I was Twittering at Sarah from my phone and she was Twittering at me from her phone. We weren’t texting. We weren’t talking on the phone. We were sending text messages, me in Scranton and her in LA, to a website that sent the message to another person, possibly in the form of a text message. And one of the things I’m asked is the proper etiquette on how to continue interacting with the person - a person that she’s never met. And I think that, on a certain level, that’s kinda weird. [NOTE: Although that exchange was the impetus for this post, Sarah was TOTALLY KIDDING.]
I work in social media. I’m a bit of a social media junkie. But it takes a conversation like that to drive home how much unnecessary scaffolding we erect around our lives on the internet. I understand the reasons why - There was a point at which I didn’t associate my name with this blog because I know my grandmother Googles me and because I use the f-word here. And that kind of obfuscation leads to the way we segment out our communications.
“Relationships,” Sarah messages me, “are so complicated these days.” It’s true. You have to worry about when to change your Facebook status more than when to meet the girl’s parents. When I went back to ‘Single’, I was literally flooded with phone calls and emails and messages; I sometimes forget that what I do online goes to hundreds of sets of eyes, not just the ones I know personally. Not that I’d behave differently, just that it’s always a bit of a shock.
How do you navigate the real life/internet balance in your life?
EDIT: I guess maybe the real question is ‘Is there a real life/internet balance in your life?’ How much of the distinction between the two is imaginary?
6 comments
“no sympathy”?! why, if you’re not weeping into your beard right now, and totally deserving of our sympathy, you are absolutely destroying your image as the tough bastard with the heart of gold you have worked so hard to cultivate via the internet!
seriously, sorry it didn’t work out.
but anyway: I try to draw the firmest line I can between my ‘net self and my professional/personal self. I can be lenient in crossing over the personal into the ‘net, because I do try to be genuine in my dealings and am happy to become friends with people I know only virtually, which I think requires some level of sharing.
In my professional/personal life, I’m usually reluctant to connect the dots too firmly toward my ‘net life, for a wide variety of reasons; in no particular order…
–I’m pretty comfortable wearing my geek badge on my breast, but even so, I’m not 100% comfortable with most of my professional contacts knowing everything about how I choose to express myself online. I never write anything with any specificity about work, people I work with, etc, so I’m not worried about that really. On occasion, when I’ve had work/professional contacts or friends just flat-out discover my internet stuff, they are usually pleasantly surprised. Recently, for the first time, I’ve had a professional contact comment on my recreational blogging in a positive way and relate it to my professional abilities as a writer/blogger/internet whatever. I think it does speak to my general awareness of the internet and my ability to use it as a communication and marketing tool, which is why I hope someday to set up some kind of “pro” blog where I talk about marketing, PR, pop culture, technology, and maybe real estate in such a way that I can use it to promote my awareness of the online space without having to introduce total strangers to my post about the time I shit my pants in a mall parking lot.
–I flat-out utilize “work time” to do all this recreational stuff; right now, I have a work project open in a couple documents, plus a freelance one in a word doc, plus two blog posts. I’m always multi-tasking and stealing time from my employer to do whatever I please; I still work really hard, perform with good results, and get positive feedback from my peers and supervisors, so I’m not that worried about it. Still, if someone were to see my blogs and check the time codes and think at all about it, they’d realize I do blog frequently from work, and I don’t want to go down that road.
Ultimately, I keep the separation because I want the maximum ability to express myself online; it’s a really important creative outlet to me, and the minute I start getting “feedback” from my boss or a freelance client or some random cousin, it makes me think I should censor myself or limit what I do, and I hate that feeling.
Hmm. lots here. I’m gonna BLOG ABOUT THIS SHIT.
I definitely don’t want to discount the ability to cultivate and maintain real friendships virtually. Hell, you ‘re a good example of that, Matt, as are plenty of other people that are going to be reading this.
But I think navigating the bleed between the two is weird sometimes. Hell, when I started dating again, I was shocked to find out that girls were Googling me to do research. And a bit weirded out. I’m that far out of the loop.
I do have a ‘don’t talk about work’ rule that I stick to pretty firmly most of the time, except when work is a background detail in an anecdote, like in the Facebook story from last summer. I blog about work on my company’s website and write about work in my company’s print magazine, and that’s plenty.
[...] Fellow Alert Nerd, online pal, and bearded wonder Jeff posted over at his excellent home blog on the lines we draw between our various selves, and why those lines exist, and how they complicate…well, [...]
Dude, I was half-kidding when I asked you that thing. Trying to lighten the mood and all. But it does bring up sort of an interesting point, like if you’re all FACEBOOK FRIENDS with two halves of a married couple and then the couple gets divorced and it is not pleasant, do you have to unfriend one of them? I mean, this extra layer of complication did not exist back in Web 1.0 land!
One friend of mine was deluged with calls, emails, etc when she changed her FB status from “Single” — all she did was remove the relationship status, period, but it showed up in the newsfeed as “Ms. Facebooky Person is no longer listed as ’single.’” So. You know.
These lines blur for me all the time. I haven’t been great about setting specific boundaries; I guess I try to deal with issues as they come up. That said, I don’t really advertise my blogging and such to co-workers unless they are also friends and I’ve tried to keep my Twitter on the semi-down-low when it comes to certain sects of people (I still don’t want to lock it, though). As the Twitter community has gotten bigger, I think I’ve sort of unconsciously toned things down — self-censored a bit. I’m much more aware of what I’m saying now that I’m not just saying it to three people.
I guess, ultimately, I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate this slowly expanding world. I mean, I used to be able to pretty much do whatever on the internet and still be semi-anonymous — like, not everyone from my “real life” knew how to navigate the internet, so it wasn’t really a big deal. But now…now my dad is on Facebook.
MY DAD IS ON FACEBOOK.
Great post (both of you).
Sarah, I know you were kidding. I added a note to the post to make sure everybody else knows, too.
[...] is a bit of a riff on an older post that I’ve been thinking about pretty consistently. I’ve been doing a lot of reading [...]
Leave a Comment