A lack of slap

I have several good friends that I hang out with normally, people I hold in high esteem and people I trust to provide information and feedback from their world, as well as our shared experience. One of the massive advantage of having good friends is that they tell us when they think we are behaving badly - from a position that they are doing it out of care for us. In my opinion, this is enormously valuable.

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With a colleague (and friend for over a decade) today, the discussion led into giving feedback to people and how valuable it can be as a reflection and potential modifier of behavior. As I am interested in the various aspects and risks of our continued separation and disconnection from each other, I mentioned how this could affect us in society, considering that we have not only become more digital in our social arrangement, we have also become more narrow in topics.

Whereas a "traditional" relationship covers many topics and ranges of conditions, a lot of the internet conversation and "peer group" are organized around a particular topic. These topics that are discussed are also often polarized and combative in some way. What this could likely result in is less pushback on poor behavior from "our side" as we are supporting the common argument of "our side". Yes, there can be a lot of negative feedback from the other side, but that can be discarded and discounted, as it is coming from "them", not us.

What I wonder is if we are now lacking the proverbial "slap" from people who's opinion we value, as we have effectively replaced a lot of our social group with topical "Yes-men" who are invested in our side of the argument, regardless of how we behave. No only that, these people don't necessarily know us or have any other information on us, other than around that topic - this means that they not only have very little experience with us in order to reference our behavior against our personality, they also aren't invested in us as people in the same way friends are, meaning that they do not care - as long as we are able to inflict pain on the common enemy, the other side of the argument.

I think this might be why trolling behavior is so supported by people who might not support that same kind of behavior in real life. The screen also removes our need to act or respond to the bad behavior of our digital allies, as it takes away the responsibility, social expectation and allows us to remain passive or ignore, as we are largely anonymous voyeurs of the interaction.

But, not only is there a lack of close people who are able to say "Dude, you are being a dick", there is actually encouragement for poor social behavior, as long as it is in support of that common enemy. Change the topic to something that hits closer to home of the ally, and things shift on a 180 and the recent ally will respond, but now they are on the other side of the argument, so it can be ignored and discarded.

friend (n.)
"one attached to another by feelings of personal regard and preference,"

Friends are personal, but once we move into the digital realm and separate ourselves by topic and identity, this individual personality is lost. Friends are not people who are momentarily in our lives, they are people who have some history with us that extends across topical borders, across times that are good and bad, across emotional boundaries - friendship becomes a shared experience that takes investment and therefore, *holds value. It is because of this that real friends will give their personal opinion of our behavior and because we have invested into them too, we are more likely to listen.

There are many aspects to social interaction that we take for granted or that we are blind to, yet we are changing how we interact and communicate in ways that will affect our behaviors and, our personalities in a given situation. Maybe enduring friendships will become a thing of the past and will be far ore transitory, but I wonder what we would lose in the process.

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The End