I regularly communicate with a man named Colm (hi, Colm!).
Colm and I have never met. We've never been introduced. We've never even started a conversation with each other. In fact, this post marks the first time I have ever produced the words "hi, Colm" in my entire life.
I've never seen Colm or spoken to him. I've never written him a letter or an email - or sent him a text message. He's never written to me. I only know what he looks like thanks to one picture, which I saw for the first time some months after I started communicating with him. He did not send me the picture, just as I have never sent him a picture of myself - although he has seen one.
We've never been in the same country at the same time. We have walked some of the same streets, but months apart. Even if we had been walking down the same street at the same time, we probably would have walked passed each other without a flicker of recognition. We do not know any of the same people and, as far as I know, none of the people we know know each other.
We move in different circles on different sides of the world.
Yet, I know more about Colm than I do about many of the people who work my building. I know where he lives (not an exact address, but a rough ballpark). I know who he lives with. I know what he does for a living, where he works and when he got that job. I know where he was born (again, just a ballpark). I know what his highest educational qualification is. I know what he thinks about issues ranging from gay marriage to the use of English in the Eurovision Song Contest. I know English is his native language, but he doesn't particularly like it. I know he finds the last days of Autumn in Estonia miserable. I know he's thinking about buying a new computer, but he's hoping to avoid it for as long as possible. I know what he usually eats for breakfast.
If you asked him, he could probably tell you he knows a similar range of facts about me. He's never particularly told me any of these things, just like I've never particularly told him most of the details he knows about my life. This information is a matter of public record - anyone in the world could find out these details. Heck, anyone in the world could read every word Colm and I have written to each other.
I know Colm because there are a couple of blogs which we both read and comment on. After reading each other's comments on these blogs for a while, we started reading and commenting on each other's blogs. Pretty much every word we've ever "said" to each other has been in relation to a blog post first produced for the world at large.
If you asked me to classify my "relationship" with Colm, I'd put us in the same bracket as people who eat lunch in the same staff-room and often participate in the same conversations. Friendly acquaintances, I guess. Friendly acquaintances who've never met and don't know any of the same people...
Except the men who write those two blogs. I know more about those guys than I should, as well - considering I've never met them, either. Heck, I've even seen pictures of their children.
Oh, and the reason why I read those blogs? My cousin got me onto them. A cousin I haven't spoken to in person for over ten years.
Crazy world.
Hi Sharon! I think the internet offers us all a whole host of opportunities to network that could never have been imagined 15-20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThat said I don't think people who only know each other only online and who have never met in RL actually know each other. Perhaps it's another new type of knowing.
I had a relationship online for over two years when I was younger and I thought I knew the girl but when we met for the first time I realised that I didn't know anything. All I knew about her was from talking but it's a whole different experience being in the physical presence of that person. As I had only ever seen 2d pictures of her face I had no idea what the side or the back of her head looked like.
I probably knew more about this girl's dreams and interests than her own mother but as for how she drank her tea, what shampoo she used, what colour her favourite clothes were, I had no idea.
Life is strange indeed. Is ait an mac an saol in Irish.
Oh, I don't know about a "new type of knowing". I think this has really been around ever since people noticed the postage system let them make new "friends".
ReplyDeleteIt's the old concept of "pen-pals" given a new twist. "Pen-pals" never really know who you are, but they know things about you that no one else knows.
Things you don't necessarily want to talk about with people you see everyday, but want to tell someone. Things that don't come up in conversation, but you feel like expounding anyway. Things you've already mentioned to the people you "live" with, but they didn't seem interested...
Plus, writing to a stranger is a chance to be known purely for what you think about. Not the silly little things that come out of your mouth during the course of normal conversations, but the things you take the time to compose. And no one really judges you based on your looks or the clothes you wear - just what you tell them.
If that doesn't sound like writing a blog, I don't know what does.
I think that's one of the things blogs do - they turn the whole world into your pen-pal.
At the same time, I think the staff-lunchroom analogy also works. You end up knowing things about people you don't really talk to, just because you're both taking part in the same conversations.
Everything changes, yet everything stays the same.