Perhaps it is just me but at times I find this blogging malarky frustrating. I am not referring here to the technical difficulties any of we intrepid bloggers face with regular monotony, I mean something slightly more profound.
Those sceptical souls out side of the blogosphere find it hard to relate to the principle that we find true friends, support, understanding and enjoyment from this endeavor, how often have you been told we are not 'real friends' or 'real people' or that you 'need to get out more' or 'get a life? I beg to differ there but that is not what this post is about and so before I digress further...... back to my point.
The frustration for me is in forging good and real friendships with people who in reality I know I am unlikely ever to meet. People I would love to sit and share a coffee with and to talk face to face with, people who's lives are difficult in some way and I cannot help as much as I would like. Friends who I genuinely care about and feel somehow I am not doing enough for, or who I would just like to be able to give a hug from time to time. People I know I would get on with like 'a house on fire', laugh unendingly with and have fun with.
The w.w.w. and the blogosphere has opened up a whole new world of interesting people for those of us that choose to use it and yet like anything, it is not perfect and brings with it it's own new aggravations and frustrations.
Words are powerful, they are an important form of communication but are not our only form of communication. We interact with our body language, our dialect, our facial expressions, our syntax, our voice tones and our personal manner of speech, to name but a few, and all of those things are missing here. It is easy to be misunderstood when one can't hear the others tone of voice or see their expression and it's hard often to express exactly what we mean and know that the other party has grasped our meaning. How often have you had an I.M conversation, an IRC conversation or sent an email....... only to find yourself struggling with only the typed word as your communication to undo some unintended hurt or to make yourself completely understood? As a veteran of IRC I can recall many a time I have sat in frustration at my inability to communicate exactly what I mean.
Yes we have webcams but they are very limited and I have rarely seen one that offers anything more than a badly pixelated, jumping image on a good day!
That said, the positives far outweigh the negatives and who among us would be without it now? Not me that's for sure". Frustrations, misunderstandings, aggravations and the rest of it, I'll take 'em all, for despite all of it my world has become a bigger more interesting place with the advent of the w.w.w. and I have met people I count among my true friends.
Sunday, 6 February 2005
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It is interesting the folks you 'meet' on the various web sites, isn't it? And though you may never actually meet face-to-face you do become 'friends' and share a lot of feelings, hopes, dreams. I had met a very nice woman on a writer's e-group and later she told me about a diary site (now vanished). We wrote back and forth for a couple of years. Then, just when we started to actually phone each other (she was in Eastern US, I am in Western Canada), she 'vanished'. I finally reached her and found out she'd had a stroke. (and she was under 50! but had been going through a great deal of horrible stress related to her marriage etc). We spoke that once. She emailed me a few times after that, very painstakingly trying to get the words typed (and she used to write poetry and short stories!). Then she vanished again. I tried phoning. The line was disconnected. I sent a Christmas letter. It hasn't been replied to or returned. Did she die? Did she suffer another stroke? I feel just as bad about losing her as if she had been a long-time personal friend. So I know you can become 'close' to people you meet on these blogs, journals and e-groups.
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