Transitory Lifestyle
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships I have cultivated over time. I really like dissecting and discussing social groups and relationships because of the apparent strangeness of my own. I don’t think my own experiences are necessarily “wrong,” it all just comes down to the idea of cultural relativism and what feels “right” to ones self.
Since I was probably 12 or 13, the internet has become an increasingly significant part of my life. So much so that now I fear I may not even be able to function well without it (but many feel that way). One of the most pivotal moments in the past 10 years for me starts with a PlayStation Eye and a relationship separated by ~4,000 miles. I’m not much of a gamer anymore, but those who are will know what a PlayStation Eye is — it’s essentially a webcam for the PlayStation 3. It allows you to video chat with your friends over the PlayStation Network.
It’s funny when I think about it, because the PlayStation 3 is what really introduced me to online social networking. What at one point seemed insignificant changed the way I look at relationships forever. I began voice chatting with a fellow gamer from Ireland, which led to private chats, and eventually purchasing a PlayStation Eye so he could actually see me and I could see him. Everyday after school, like clockwork, I’d get online and chat with this person. And I don’t quite remember what my logic was at the time, but what we formed felt real. It didn’t feel creepy, or weird, it just felt right in my gut. And the PlayStation itself allowed us to share experiences, whether it was killing each other in Call of Duty or racing each other in Burnout.
Fast-forward a couple years, and I’m walking around Los Angeles with a group of people that before this day I had only ever known in an online form. But I knew them. There was no “Nice to meet you.” Instead it was a less formal “What’s up, man?” I knew where they worked, what shows they were into, how they talked, and all the other subtle details that defined who they were. The internet really has made the world smaller, by enabling us to have rich, intimate experiences with people at the farthest reaches of this planet. But an interesting latent function (not expected, but not necessarily bad) developed from this.
By the time I was 16-years old, nearly 100% of my relationships outside of my family had been developed online. I had traveled across the country to meet these people, and we had developed strong, deep relationships. I was able to get deeper with these friends than any friends in the past, especially those I had met through the contexts of places like school. But now my network not only includes strong relationships formed online, it also includes loose relationships formed online. These loose relationships are most interesting to me because their inherent value is in experiences.
There are many places I can go — Seattle, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Boulder, etc — where life can almost feel storybook-like. What I mean by this is that it feels almost like I’m living completely different lives in all these places. Tom in Boulder is not nearly the same as Tom is San Francisco or Seattle. One day I can be at home with my family in Boulder, living a pretty regular life, and the next day I can be doing completely different [redacted] things in Berkeley, CA. The internet has allowed me to form so many relationships, that no matter where I go, I just need to post on Facebook where I’ll be, and I’ll always have friends there to take me along on interesting journeys and experience new things. These loose relationships are defined by experiences, but they’re also ephemeral in a way because I don’t talk to these loose relationships frequently or get very deep with them.
That isn’t to say I don’t have deep relationships with people I’ve met online — because, trust me, I do. Like I said previously, a select few people that I initially met online are my best friends and I can get really deep with them. It’s just that social groups online, like Twitter, connect us with so many people that share common interests, that we can befriend many people but only have a select group of very important relationships. This isn’t anything unique about the internet — Dunbar’s number is a famous study about this.
All of this is to say that we’re living in an amazing time. Anyone can use free resources online to change the paths of their lives forever, real relationships can be formed over the internet, and an interesting idea for an app can turn into a billion dollar business disrupting transportation. And we’re watching it all unfold.
Thinking back, I think what brought me to where I am today was standing up to uncertainty. I could have chosen to not take the risk of meeting some people in-person that I had only known in 2D-form. I could have chosen to not purchase a PlayStation Eye, and get to know someone 4,000 miles away. And I don’t know what would have become of my life because of it. But what I do know, is that online relationships can be real if you want them to. Also that we need to get some sociology majors studying this phenomena. That I am certain of.