Feelings and emoticons :)

Digital communication is excellent. I'm not talking about phones or TVs here, but the geekier stuff. I live in Forest, and we like to play video games there. A lot. \n After someone figured out that everyone's Xboxes could be on one network using his computer's Ethernet jacks, every night there are at least 16 people online playing "Halo 2." Using special microphones, players can talk to each other over the connection while they shoot at each other, building friendships. Yet people often look down on this, since it's not "real" social interaction. \nI used to frequent online message boards a great deal. We talked, with text. We laughed, with :-D. We cried, with :'-C. But when my "real-life" friends heard my stories about things that happened on a message board, I usually received snorts or eye rolls. Only when I met message board users face-to-face were our friendships legitimate, and not a moment before our meeting. Why is this?\nFor most of us college students, our friendships tend to be defined by what we do together: Some study together, some play ball together, some drink together. But in all cases, friends talk to each other. Sworn enemies can play a game of hoops, but friends chat on the bench. People tend to remember the activities that they've done with their friends, but I think it's the hours spent sitting in Mother Bear's that make them remember a human being. \nIn some respects, society is warming up to the idea of a friend with whom you only share conversations. Instant message conversations are pretty standard fare, nowadays. People move away, and communication continues with IM. But too often these friendships fizzle away because "we can't do anything together." TheFacebook has tainted hundreds of thousands of people. But most of the groups created on TheFacebook don't spark much dialogue because they don't have "activities" or "events." The fact that these media exist is encouraging, but they don't live up to their full potential because people want physical interaction. We forget that people sit and talk in their lounge or living room all the time, without any activity to justify it. \nPeople are often unwilling to connect with something that doesn't have an immediately human quality. A voice on a telephone, we can handle. A face is even better. But plain text -- people don't want to warm up to it. We can rationalize that we're talking to a human, but our subconscious won't put in the emotion. \nIn a world where the computer is becoming more central in our lives, the inability to form a "real" relationship with someone without seeing him or her in person is disturbing. Compared to college, the adult world is already a difficult place to make friends. Jobs can be quite formal, there are no floormates to meet through your Resident Assistant and neighbors will probably not be as friendly as the drunken guy who wandered into your kitchen at 2 a.m. to say "Hello." Creating and maintaining friendships with people you don't see every week will become crucial, provided you want friends. \nI'm not saying there's something wrong with hanging out with someone "in real life." It is the more natural way -- as we are wired -- but relating to people without corporeal interaction is a good skill as well. Don't ditch the friends you have, but maybe IM that person you knew back in high school. If you're in TheFacebook, talk to someone in one of you groups. Join a pen pal program if you hate keyboards. It's easy, and if you're like me, you can make some cool friends doing it.