Aditya Mukherjee
The Internet has been and will always remain a tool for communication between people, but somehow people have been confused well-enough over time that they believe this communication is what “social” is all about. It’s not. Today’s social networks don’t make us social; they make us voyeurs and exhibitionists.
The satisfaction of being social is in the interaction. An interaction between people is most satisfying when it’s in person — it’s why we have get togethers at our places rather than have a group video chat. Sharing pictures isn’t social — being there with another person and sharing the moment is. Sharing a website with a “+1” isn’t social — sitting down with people and discussing it is. As one peels off layers of another person’s presence, that satisfaction reduces in intensity until there is nothing of the person, and hence no satisfaction, left. The Internet is at the bottom of the presence barrel. It’s as removed from human as removed and as artificial as artificial can get1.
Some people believe that the Internet has allowed them to stay in touch with people they wouldn’t have otherwise and hence made them more “social” than they would have been without it. If one thinks about it for a second, all they’re saying is that the Internet lets them remain lazy while giving them a false sense of “connection” with other people, regardless of how superficial that connection might be.
Social was just a fad to bring more people (read: eyeballs) to the Internet and keep them on it so that advertisers could monetize them. The reason online networks cannot mimic real world connections is because real world connections are much more than viewing and sharing — it’s about the human interaction. The experience of being there with another person, doing things is what makes a connection — not two display pictures being joined by a line.
And that’s why the Internet will never be social.
My issue here is that the activities that we’ve started accepting as social are anything but. Just because the Internet makes it easier for other people to be a part of an activity doesn’t make them, me or the activity any more social than previous considered. It just makes participation easier; it has nothing to do with the quality of the interaction itself.
The Internet allows us to find new people — like-minded even — but with a few exceptions, the real interdependence starts after a physical meeting and exchanging of phone numbers. I would argue that interdependent relationships are what we should try to develop, since they’re what enrich us as social animals. The Internet is a very good enabler, especially for people-phobic people like me. But let’s not confuse an enabler as an empowerer. I am as social/socially empowered as I was before any of these social networks showed up, as is everyone else.
Even the photographs you see are low resolution and dimensionally restricted representations of another representation of the real thing. That means photographs on the web are twice removed from the real world. ↩