image via http://www.thefbomb.org

Remember back in the day when we needed to get over someone, we could totally try to pretend that the other person no longer existed?

With the exception of bumping into that person in the street, or at social events thrown by friends left neutral post-split, there was virtually no mental residue of needing to know that person’s current affairs.

Enter the era of social networks, blogs, and status updates – where it’s all out there for the world to see. The ultimate blow of having the magical ability to follow said person’s self-elected dirty-laundry.

I say “this person” because, well, as it pertains to my life specifically this person is not what society would necessarily deem to be an “Ex”. He’s a person who was (circumstantially) important to me, and simply needent be any longer.

I choose to think it’s as simple as that (Stage 1: Denial).

At that point in our whatever-it-was, the wires of communication had become totally tangled. I needed to get over it but there he was online and everywhere.

In an effort to distance myself – and do some detangling – I blocked him on IM (ow). I un-followed him on Twitter (double ow!). I removed him from my feed on Facebook (no one needs to know). I haven’t actually de-friended him on Facebook. After consulting friends about FB rules, everyone considered the maneuver – although strategic – to be pretty harsh.

Did it help?

Well, sorta. Obviously the curiousity takes time to fade. And old habits die hard. I think what happens is, in time, the other person wonders where you went and they reach out to you. And that’s probably the kind of person you’d want to be with in the first place – and so the universe somehow righted itself.

A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation amongst friends in the dark corner of a Chinatown Bar.

Of all things one could discuss on a Saturday night at 1a.m. we got to chatting about, well, chatting. Specifically, on voicemail, e-mail, IM, SMS, FB and Twitter.

Leave it to the nerds.

As biggest nerd ever, I thought more about this over the course of the next few days.

While the aforementioned mediums make it easier to communicate, while we participate we’re sacrificing the human experience and encouraging alienation from others.

My friends know that I generally dislike voicemail. It’s rare that I leave them and admittedly barely listen to them.

They’re like an awkwardly scripted one-way time capsule from the past. Why not leave the same message in real time – circa now?

In 1995 I signed up for my first email address. In the interest of self-disclosure for the sake of this story I (gulp) became semi-addicted to AOL chat rooms.

This was back in the day when we were all on dial-up – and paid for internet by the hour.

Like most people, I was beyond intrigued with the notion of chatting in real time with anyone from anywhere in the world. For a angst-ridden teenage girl growing up in the midwestern suburbs it was my portal.

Ironically enough, I quickly became friends with someone who happened to live nearby. We immediately bonded over our mutual obsession of music, media, the arts, and local underground parties (ok fine, “raves”).

There were no rules. We’d chat anytime of day or night when both of us happened to be online. There was no limit to the range of topics we’d discuss.

Over time, our lives became closer and he felt like a real friend.

One year we briefly met in person by total accident. We chatted for a few awkward moments until my friend pulled me away. “Who is that guy?” She asked.

She didn’t even have an e-mail address at that point so maybe she wouldn’t understand…or would she?  I tried to explain.

“Ok, anyway…”, she replied. “Wanna get some frozen yogurt?”

When I moved away to college our friendship continued.

He’d give me feedback on various art projects and tips for acclimating  to a newly vegan diet. I’d give him girl advice and let him know what I thought of his latest remix. We’d crack jokes, share URLs and pontificate the meaning of life years later as I procrastinated writing those 30 page papers in grad school.

He moved to Los Angeles, I moved to Boston.

We became friends on MySpace, then Friendster, then Facebook.

I moved to Los Angeles.

We slowly became friends In Real Life. Bonded by our mutual common interests, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion chatting with him poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel or under the skylights at LA hotspot Bardot.

My male companions give him the hairy eye wondering who the dude is I’m chatting conspiratorially alongside.

15 years later, we still communicate on IM. Now, we also communicate via SMS and e-mail too.

And sometimes, we’ll even drop the other a Voicemail.

Are our lives intertwined? Somewhat.

Will we ever connect on a deep and meaningful level? Probably not.

As part of different spheres, our interests overlap on a social level only.

Yet for someone I’ve hung out with for maybe an hour total in person, he probably knows more about me than anyone.

Communicating on IM can build a form of friendship. We’re missing the part that hanging in person brings – the adventures, atmosphere, lingering conversations, observations, body language. These things bring meaning to a surface-level friendship and make it come alive.

Can a real friendship be fostered online then, when all we have is type?

Leave your comments by clicking on “comments” at the top of this post.

I used to be the type who was agreeable to attending almost anything – I blame the Second City improv training that brought us the concept of “yes…and”.

If you asked me to see a band play, I’d say yes even if I secretly thought the band was crap. If you asked me to meet you for an after work drink, I’d say yes then later realize it’s logistically impossible to do so.

Triple booking on a Thursday night left it impossible to attend all events in question.

I had earned a bit of a reputation of what my mom likes to call a “flibbergibbit”. Maybe it’s a fear of commitment – I’m not sure, but I’ve gotten much better.

Facebook makes me face these issues head-on to a degree. Are you actually attending this event? Are you friends with this person?

Simply put: Yes, or NO?

And of course there’s a loophole for events: the option of saying …”maybe”. What do all of those maybes mean anyway?

Do we really mean “I’ll think about it and actually consider attending your event?” or are we just being polite?

My friend Jeff sees it all on my FB feed. “Are you really going to all of these events?” He asks. I told him the truth – mostly, I will.

Mostly.

Friend requests are easier. Either I know you, or I don’t.

Velvet rope. Easy. Decision made.

At first it was hard to kibosh friend requests – aw, this person wants to be my FRIEND! How sweet.

I learned fast when the new friendship almost immediately turns sour, when my news feed quickly becomes cluttered with random musings from a total stranger.

Groups are an easy one to moderate because once you join, you can control how often you’d like to hear from the group.

Pages are trickier because they’ll also show up in your feed and do I really want everyone to know that I’m secretly a fan of Wienerschnitzel?  (speaking hypothetically here. The truism for me would be more like, hypo-allergenic vegan non-soy based vegetable protein).

MySpace was a mad race to connect to everything and everyone. With that lesson learned, FB has taught us to be more selective. This forces us to make decisions about who and what we want to include in our (online) life – and how that can apply to decisions we make every day.

My friend Leila is seeing two guys. I say, good for her! It’s interesting because she communicates with each of them in two totally different ways.

The first has absolutely zero presence online. No profile on a company website, no Facebook page, no Flickr feed of his latest holiday or comments left on blogs for her to dissect. He’s a young attorney and “doesn’t have the time”.  In fact, according to Leila he’s even elusive on e-mail. Basically she can’t find any dish on him at all (c’mon, you know you Google your dates too!).

They primarily communicate by speaking over the phone a couple of times a week (yes he does have a RAZR) and they see each other a couple of times weekly.

The second guy she’s dating is totally plugged in. He’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Vimeo, Digg, you name it.

They communicate several times a day via iChat, SMS/MMS text, and e-mail. They’re “friends” on Facebook. And, thanks to Twitter she always knows what he’s up to. Is he seeing anyone else? Who needs a magic 8 ball – ask Twitter!

Interestingly enough, although she communicates much less with guy #1 she feels closer to him.

While communication with guy #2 is consistently frequent it feels superficial because she doesn’t have his undivided attention. Oh, and it doesn’t help that she rarely sees him in person.

Guy #1, while she sees him on a regular basis, has more to talk about with IRL (In Real Life…hah). She also has no pre-conceived thoughts about him that she’s garnered herself from digging up dirt online; no assumptions as to who he may be as a person. She’s gotta find this all out on her own.

If we communicate more frequently with someone thru different mediums does it necessarily promote a healthy relationship?  it doesn’t appear that we’re getting to know a person on a truly deeper level, maybe even at all. With so many of life’s distractions online and in real life, is communicating with anyone on a meaningful level even possible? Have we become all “action” and no “talk”?

A relationship of any kind is meant to be rewarding. Each party wants validation from the other. In a narcissistic world where most online profiles are carefully self-groomed for vanity, the concept of nurturing any kind of relationship becomes a hall of mirrors where each friend appears just like the next.

Maybe the relationships of the future will revert to old-school techniques and mannerisms – like sitting down in person and having a conversation. Even then the smoke and mirrors ambiance of a dimly lit restaurant, music, and people-watching exist. Perhaps just having the opportunity alone to get to know someone – who they really are, not just online and via mass-emails – is what creates a meaningful relationship.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts by clicking on the comments field at the top of this post.

On the homepage of a typical social network like MySpace or Facebook, I can see as-they-happen updates from a vetted group of friends, networks, groups and organizations. The answer to the open-ended question “What’s on Your Mind?” gives way to a cacophony of information equivalent to a bunch of people shouting into space. Twitter, perhaps the most extreme exercise in brevity, allows for detailed minutiae of one’s inner monologue in 140 characters or less.

A new form of communication has been born: a medium that allows top-of-mind banter to be shared with whoever has the will to read it. Lifestreaming. Thoughts, images, links and video of the very innate variety can be posted for the world to see. There’s no excuse for someone with access to an Internet connection to not have the opportunity to be heard.

Is this the new public forum – a place to openly hash the public sphere and allow for interpersonal discourse at the local and international level? Or is it passive and mundane chatter amongst so-called “friends”? Because these sites vary by locality – decentralized as Twitter, Tumblr, Friendfeed or Facebook – it’s hard to say. Each island has it’s own population and the inhabitants are speaking a dialect to everyone, yet no one at all.

Why are we so eager to participate in a phenomenon without a distinct cause or purpose driving the madness? Maybe in part because most of these services are free, but what’s the real motivation?

Not too far in the distant past, privacy on the web was a hot button issue. We were hesitant to use real names in email addresses, give clues to things like real age, location, race, and gender, let alone details of political views or religious beliefs.

Despite the fear of releasing personal identity, the willingness to openly communicate with others remained clear. Chat rooms, message boards, emails…all lit up immediately with a new way of reaching out to the rest of the world.

Today, the thought of strangers openly chatting in online chat rooms seems dull. Gone are the days of emailing total strangers or using handles to appear anonymous or intriguing. We now strictly communicate in methods we have absolute control over with those we know – or audiences we feel comfortable sharing with.

We allow constructed personalities and messages to become on display in a one-way feed by communicating specific bits of information to these enabled groups or communities. We’re keen to openly divulge personal information – because we’ve come to realize that we have total control over what is being revealed.

This evolved way of communicating creates a one-sided conundrum whereby we are ultimately talking to ourselves.

We’re sharing information as a way to connect with others to fulfill individual needs of the ego. The reflection of who we present online is a reflection of the ideal self. We are not creating outlets for self-expression or meaning, but rather building upon an artificial construct of self consisting of imagery, text, number of friends – a pastiched cultural relevance that the ideal me would find significant to present to others.

We are an amphitheatre full of egos all shouting for recognition and importance – if only from ourselves.

Later in the series, I’ll take a look at how this affects the concept of the public forum by taking into account issues at the local, national, and international level.

More:

Twouble with Twitter:

Facebook and Twitter allow me to tell you what I’m doing, where I’m going, and how I’m feeling from almost any place at any time.

And anyone can see.

Brands aside, how does this new form of communication affect our relationships with others? It appears that we may be more connected yet becoming increasingly distanced from each other.

And by the way, who exactly are we talking to?

Is this an example of how we can use the internet to improve public discourse – or is it all banal chatter?

I’m beginning a series of long-form essays to explore answers to some of these questions. More to come.

For the second year in a row my cousins and I are participating in our annual holiday gift exchange.

We prefer to take the “white elephant” approach, playing a game whereby each participant brings a wrapped gift within a set budget. The gift can be anything – new, used, nostalgic, silly, practical.

We draw numbers to determine the order of who gets to choose from the pile first, and as we go through the procession one has the option to steal someone elses gift or pick a new one from the pile.

The game is fun and relieves some pressure from everyone both socially and financially. Really, what do you get your cousin from LA who assumedly gets acupuncture in Malibu with P. Diddy while sipping a pomegranate infused something-or-other? And by the way what’s a pomegranate?

I understand the dilemma. Plus most of the cousins are in college so asking them to spend money could be kinda gauche.

As the oldest of the bunch I felt a rare sense of responsibility to start the tradition. So around this time last year, I sent a message to everyone on Facebook explaining the exchange and providing a set of rules.

Yes, every single one of my 6 cousins is on Facebook.

And Yes, it’s the most effective way to reach them.

I take it as a sign of the times. I occasionally send the cousins messages to inform about an upcoming family get-together, or a quick reminder to vote.

I try not to keep tabs on activities that their collegiate freedom entails – photos of random debauchery involving beer pong and keg stands of which apparently have yet to become technologically defunct.

We’re all becoming more connected than we think. Family members are not only a phone call away, but also an im, tweet, meebo, myspace or fb message, blackberry message or text away from receiving instantaneous communication on the go via text, audio, photo or video.

Pretty cool.

This year, rather than everyone getting drunk enough to easily enjoy one another’s company and pretend that we didn’t know what you did this year, I figured we could give it a go the (ideologically) grown-up way.

Snarky remarks, bad jokes, and off-handed political commentary – bring it on! Maybe that’s the real game we play.

5 years ago when I was in grad school, my media theory professor proclaimed that “years from now you’re going to remember me as the old lady yakking on about something called convergence”. I was intrigued. Then and there I decided to work this into my career somehow. Although I wasn’t quite sure how as this very process of convergence – the merging of television, internet, and radio – was and still is unfolding before our eyes.

This merging of mediums distinctly affects how we receive media from both a technological standpoint and an experiential one. Given the growing advantage of communicating easily and directly between viewers via mobile technology and the internet, the experience is no longer passive.

The other afternoon as I waited in line to pick up dry cleaning (mine, not someone else’s thankyouverymuch) I caught a few scenes of an old episode of Married with Children. The show seemed so dated and not just because of Marcy D’arcy’s wacky hairdos. The script plodded along and lacked the jumpy camera shots, asides, and irreverent dialogue that we’ve come to expect from reality shows and newer sitcoms like 30 Rock and Arrested Development that seamlessly weave multiple characters, story-lines and alternate visual scenes.

Narrative has evolved past traditional mis-en-scene on a studio set with scripted dialogue. With the advancement of technology it allows not only backchannel conversation about a show but also sets a stage for supplemental original content and conversation (there are also tremendous marketing opportunities here of which I’ll touch upon in another post).

The second season of AMC’S Mad Men that just wrapped a few weeks ago incorporated the micro-blogging tool Twitter to further the viewing experience by allowing a viewer – or simply the curious – to engage in direct dialogue with each of the main characters. Twitter updates from the so-called characters (called “brand-ambassadors”) provide bonuses like tiny updates throughout the day like what the character may be doing on a given day and what his or her thoughts are on relationships with the other characters. You can even send direct messages to your favorite character and receive a message back.

This season I followed Don Draper, Betty Draper, Peggy Olson, Roger Sterling, and Ken Cosgrove. One evening I fell asleep watching an episode and awoke to notice that Betty Draper was following me on Twitter. If that’s not spooky enough, I Twittered about the experience and almost immediately received a response from Betty: “I hoped it’d be a nice surprise, I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry.”

In Australia a show called OZ Girl is slated to launch January 12th, becoming Australia’s “first social web show”. The show streams online only and encourages fans to participate by interacting directly with the main character on Facebook, Twitter, and email.

By paving the way for this non-linear narrative between television and the internet, a stronger bond is created between the viewer and the brand.

The viewer becomes an empowered fan with the ability to learn more about the characters identity, participate in dialog surrounding last night’s episode on chat rooms, buy music heard on the show, leave comments, stream b-rolls or supplementary content, and share media with friends.

For the content creator this provides almost instantaneous feedback. It also allows direct marketing opportunities, more of which I’ll touch on in a later post. As a viewer, the show becomes increasingly integrated into my lifestyle. I can watch and participate how, when, and where I want to – and this seems to be where we’re headed.

Taking in the presidential election results on Tuesday happened in different places in various ways.  Beginning at 4pm at work we tuned the TV to CNN.  NPR was on the radio. and I had npr.org and the NY Times both open on my computer.

Later on I went home to twitter the unfolding results for KCRW, the Santa Monica-based radio station where I work.  I felt particularly anxious – preferring to avoid the parties and mayhem on the streets of LA to enjoy and reflect upon on the outcome at home. But I didn’t feel alone, and I wasn’t.

I twittered as the results came in and people responded with comments like “Ooh. I like this show. One of my faves. Thanks.” and “Spanky, Spanky, Spanky, Ms Dole. Naughty campaign.”  Twitter allowed for real-time conversation fostered among strangers and among friends.  On Facebook, friends’ status messages lit up with their reactions and observations. My cell phone rang with calls from friends and family from Ohio and Los Angeles. It bleeped with incoming text messages from Paris, Boston, San Fran, and  Columbus, OH. I excitedly chatted with friends on IM.

CNN’s live video feed was broadcasting in one window and Twitter’s election page was running in another. The NYTimes election module, San Fran Chronicle, and Current TV’s election coverage were open in other tabs. NPR was blasting through the apartment (and a few of my neighbors). When the final results were announced, people were dancing, shouting and hollering with joy in the streets on the sleepy block in the beach town of Santa Monica where I live.

I think back to how this relates to the last election.  Sites like Twitter, FB, and Current TV were still babies – if they had even been born yet. The technology required to build nimble news modules was not nearly as evolved.

The ability to communicate with others with lightning speed and accuracy was nothing like it is now. The very way we communicate with one another has totally evolved. As Seth Godin recently said, “The transformation of communication is real, it’s permanent and it’s more powerful than most of us notice”.

The last administration was a secretive club that could easily manipulate voters perceptions.  We’re entering a new era where we’re constantly being informed and always plugged-in, whether we like it or not.

The internet has finally become a forum for public discourse. I can quickly and easily express who I am voting for and why. I’m not going to try to convince you to do anything – just give you reasons why I think the way I do. And because we think in a similar way, maybe you’ll be open to what I say compared to, oh I don’t know, Fox News. When election time rolls around, being from Ohio becomes especially important to me. I grew up knowing lots of people (including myself at one point) who can be easily swayed by what they hear in their sheltered communities at church or around the dinner table. It’s a self-perpetuating  mechanism with no incoming feed from the outside world.

Not anymore.