Cyberfishing

I wrote this some time ago and have no idea what to do with it. It seems like this may be an appropriate home. So - in lieu of the blog about the final class projects (which is percolating in my brain) I pass these thoughts along.

I used to live in a world where people were always around anytime day or night. At school, dorms, bars, theatres, concert halls, apartments with roommates – there was always someone to talk to – someone to interact with. When the post-adolescent world gave way to grad school and then a job and a home there was always the phone. Who haven’t I talked to in a while? Who’s up? Who wants to play?

The internet made this activity much much more interesting. When the phone got old I moved on to email. In search of constant external stimulation I cyberfish – with all that metaphorical stuff implied – The pond was defined by the depth of my address book as I set the bait, wait for a strike, and reel them in. This is not to imply that my “victims” are some writhing impaled creatures, rather this is simply a way of describing the activity. And hey, I’m gonna release em – either that they will break the line. Now I know that there is probably some deep-seated psychological reason why I do this. Like my parents spanked me too much, or too little, or my potty-training when horribly awry, or that I am in truth an empty shell of a human being that needs to constantly be filled by the ideas of others. But psychobabble aside, I genuinely enjoy the connection, the conversation, the debate, the argument with a friend, close or otherwise.

So - I sat in my cozy living room with a laptop and a beer and fished – sending out multiple emails with, at least to my mind, engaging questions or statements to see who was online, who wanted to play. Once the line was cast I would wait, sometimes getting involved in four or five conversations at once, all taking different directions. I saw this as a kind of conversational equivalent to playing chess with multiple partners spread out across a common space. I liked email –I still do, but unlike my 15-year-old, I could never quite get the hang of I’ Ming. I found it too demanding – too of the moment – too much like one of those frustrating phone interviews where no matter how much you try to remember where and who everyone is they all end up sounding the same.

Email, of course, is different – it is like one of those sonic fish finder things. Even before I open a message I know who sent it. I can do what I want with it when I want. I can wait to respond, ignore it, contemplate an answer, or abandon the conversation altogether. The choice is mine and there is no little annoying ding or constant “are you still there?” prompt to hurry me along. I am in charge, and I can invite people in or turn them away. Beyond the narcissism, what I most like about email is that it takes time – as I read through responses I am forced to listen rather than waiting to talk.

The next evolution, of course, was social networking sites like Facebook. At first I was reluctant to join, I always am when it comes to a new thing that is embraced by tons of people all at once. I am the type of person that will love an album until it is everywhere, then I go in search of more elusive listening material. But, I joined FB – the way most people do I guess, because a friend of mine had joined and I wanted to see his page and what all the fuss was about. I find this a strange and mind-bending world.

I had always sort of fantasized about wining the lottery and throwing a big party and inviting everyone I ever knew. The fantasy wasn’t generated by ego – I didn’t want them all in one place to praise me or anything - I wanted to be on the fringes, unacknowledged, but listening and watching. What I wanted to see was how people from all areas of my life would interact. What would my best friend in 4^th grade say to my wife, or my grad school buddy to my current colleagues? Of course, this is all going on all the time in cyber-space.

FB has everything I liked about living in a dorm - someone is always awake, always ready to talk even if I know them or not. The down side, naturally, is that my pond continues to grow. I speculate about those barely remembered people from High School, or that weird guy from that summer job, or that friend of a friend - why do they want to connect with me? Why do I want to engage in some horrible cyber equivalent of a social disease in which I befriend everyone that my friends have befriended? I constantly wonder, why do they want to talk to me, comment on my photos, write on my wall? And when they don’t I wonder why not. Perhaps, my apprehension comes from the fact that unlike the phone or email I am no longer in charge, I am now out of the boat and flopping around like everyone else. I get lured, snagged and dragged into a conversation with someone just as bored, just as desperate as myself.

And then I went into Second Life. Wow – a simply massive pool of people, and given the international frame, there is literally always someone awake to dance next to, shop near, or chat with. Since SL is built on the foundation of a virtual world it magnifies the idea of sharing information to sharing cyber space. Email and FB are discontinuous and asynchronous, but SL has the appearance of immediacy since controlling an avatar you move, you talk, you respond as you would in RL – but filtered through a heavily mediatized frame. Here I find the IM somewhat palatable since it provides a “private” conversation space amongst the ongoing public chatter. While it shares similar social networking qualities with FB, it is as different from FB as Technicolor is from black and white.

With the social networking sites cyberfishing has taken on a whole new meaning. The pool is huge and ever growing and I can catch people I don’t even know, and, occasionally, don’t even want to talk to. I post a “what am I thinking about,” or make a comment on a dance move or photo, or write on a wall, or respond to someone else’s postings or chat, or investigate an SL profile and bam – playtime. In these spaces I am connecting with people I didn’t even know existed, people I have never met and probably never will meet – all in one user-friendly location. Now, rather than sending multiple emails with a genuine questions to close friends, I find that I lob unusual statements and questions trying to generate a response, any response, from complete strangers, but strangers that may eventually become virtual friends

As this cyberpond continues to increase in depth and density perhaps I will eventually tire of easy prey. Maybe the benefit of so many connections with so many random people is that it will cause me to crave actual face-to-face connections. Perhaps I will return to the bar, to the theatre, to the dorm if for no other reason than to collect new friends with whom to converse. I will get their phone numbers, their email addresses, link to their Facebook accounts, find their avatars and then the process of excitement, apprehension, and aversion can start all over again. Technology giveth and technology taketh away.