It Begins

FIRST!

After almost a month of being "on my own again", i.e. in a city where I know only a few people, I have gotten really frustrated with my inability to walk outside of my sleeping chamber (which I like to call it. 'cause I can) and discover a lounge full of interesting people to talk to. I have been able to compensate for my pitiful lonely existence by integrating myself more heavily into the zephyrsphere, talking to the same people that I would normally be talking to in person in a new format. Well, not necessarily the same people. A different subset of the same superset, how's that? The thing is, even though the people are the same, the kind of connection that we are able to maintain is not.

One thing that causes this is the fact that you are generally limited by the length of a twitter post. Almost. It might not have the strict enforcement that twitter does, but in order to follow the conventional norms of zephyr, one or two sentences is your limit. This generally limits conversations to passing comments or the occasional witty banter, consisting primarily of one-liners. There are no stories. Political discussion is dramatically slowed down. The inflection in a voice, an important part of verbal communication, is lost to the dry formatting of text. Most importantly, the tightly coupled loop of words on the listener's ears and facial expressions on the speaker's eyes is cut off. The loss of these two large bodies of information which are both vital to determining the emotional content of every person involved in a discussion leads to dryer discussions that are more dominated by a person's ability to communicate that which they want other people know rather than a person's ability to read that which their conversational partner cannot or does not wish to hide.

Occasionally, I will talk to someone on the phone, which will at least allow me the information riding on someone's inflection, but that is much less common due to the level of importance that phone calls seem to bear. It is more scary than walking into a room and seeing who is there. A phone call is a very specific "I want to talk to X, and I want to talk to her now." The now is implied by the insistence of the ringer, that will give up after a mere 30 seconds, forcing X to decide between now or never. Moreover, because a phone call is almost always one-to-one, getting a phone call is like being pulled into a corner of a room and having someone whisper to you, excluding everyone else in the room from the intensity of their attention. Zephyr and email manage to get away from this intimidating, pointed formality by allowing people to talk to whomever is listening. Rather than telling Amy about the fact that Shawn's eyes have been dilated, as if she had some special reason to need to know, he can announce it to the world at large, and friends can comment if they can manage to think of some witty response. The inability to include vocal and facial inflection is generally considered a reasonable price to pay for the reduced formality in establishing communication in the first place.

An anomaly that seems to exist in this trend is gchat. Ostensibly, it has neither the benefit of public broadcast, nor the benefit of increased information. However, it manages to allow people to communicate one-to-one without being face-to-face or under very direct motivation for establishing contact. I recently had one such conversation with a a good friend of mine, Kim, and it soon escalated into a full blown... telephone conversation. We had gotten into an actually interesting conversation via text for which I wanted the benefit of verbal communication, and we switched. The topic of this fascinating conversation? Why... this blog, of course.

Rather than talking to the wide internet about our hopes, dreams, and eye examinations, we will talk to each other within hearing of everyone else. If they want to comment, then we would love more conversational partners. However, we decided to guarantee each other at least one. Also pictures. Because pictures are cool. That was Kim's idea.

Every post will come in two parts: body and comment. Lyla and I (Kim) will alternate roles as poster and commentator.

For the duration of this post, I am the commentator. I don't have a picture of a commentator, but this is a commutator.

I see two (non-business) reasons why people try to communicate with far-away friends using the various methods you mention. One is that you care about the people, and want to hear about the ups and downs of their life. The other is because you enjoy talking to them and want to have a good conversation.

For most old friends, I use Facebook to accomplish the first goal. I don’t usually update my own status or upload pictures, but I love to hear about how everyone else is doing. I was starting to feel guilty about enjoying learning about their lives without posting anything for them to read, so recently I’ve been posting more. The process for putting up pictures is much faster than it was when I uploaded albums a few years ago, so maybe I’ll be able to sustain this.

For a handful of close friends, I use the Random Phone Calls method of keeping in touch. This lets me know in more detail, and with the important inflectional cues you mention, how their life is. It also accomplishes the second goal of enjoyable conversation. The Random Phone Calls method is less awkward than you may think. My friends seem to have gotten used to it at any rate. Every 3-12 months I’ll randomly call them to see if it’s a good time to talk. We talk as comfortably as though there had never been any break in conversation and catch each other up on our lives. I challenge you to dig up the phone number of an old friend, say from high school, and call them by Tuesday. Chances are they will be surprised but glad to talk again.

I also recommend trying to meet people through Couchsurfing communities. Through Random Phone Calls, Couchsurfing, and blogging we can perhaps make your existence a little less lonely and your conversations more substantial. Let the blog begin!