what happens when analog and digital meet? or how to find real close friend in digital world?

British researchers recently focused on two most popular social networks -Myspace and Facebook. Here is what they have found out in their study: face to face interaction is the key if you want your friendship last, said Will Reader, an evolutionary psychologist at Sheffield Hallam University.

“Nearly all our close friends require face-to-face contact,” Reader told a meeting sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

In their study, Reader and colleagues asked people a series of questions about their attitudes toward friendships and found 90 percent of individuals said it was imperative to know somebody face-to-face to form the tightest bonds.

Other studies have shown most people have about 150 people in their extended networks, with just a small number considered a member of the inner circle of close friends, Reader said.

Ok, this is my REAL life story – where the line between analog and digital world is very thin (or does it exist?).
Yesterday one of my former student (big Myspace fan) said that he despises Facebook because of many reasons I shall not expose here but are connected with accessibility, their own social circle (they existed first at Myspace, before Facebook appeared), also in the last weeks found out that many friends in analog world discovered Myspace in the past 2 years, as I started with it since 2003 and didn’t pay attention on music demo bands and others. But nevertheless I got funny situation today. So here is the story.
Person A: moi. Person B: analog female friend. Person C: analog male friend. All are from the same block -city area. Person B:she is my friend for 11 years. Person C: He is my friend for 5 years. She is very into Myspace. He is alternative, but still on Facebook and doesn’t have time to e-socialize, an idle Facebook(er). He doesn’t know for her, but from my professional story/conversation we had today he found out for my (analog) friend – person B -from Myspace. He asked me this evening to show him the link as he is interested to be in her network. But if you want to be her friend, you need to join Myspace -I told him (via Google talk) *. Despite the fact that he is idle e-socializer, he joins Myspace and in two hours creates profile, makes design, etc. (he is idle , he doesn’t like it BUT if he wants to be the friend or more with her, he is filling up all those fields.). Meanwhile (2 hrs), phone conversation**: with person B, we talk ‘girls talk’ and among other things on social networks (she is psychologist) – we analyze. I mention that Person C (from our hood) would like to meet her, but he is a bit shy (he is very smart and creative designer and anthropologist), so I am sort of mediator/communicator. Ok, she said – tell him to add me as a friend at Myspace. Gosh! End of phone call. On the other side Person C is buzzing me via Google talk***. Seems his primal analog instincts made him to call me (“can I call you now?”) via phone*****, and we talk the same amount of time as I did with Person B. So, he wanted to find out, via phone, what he has to do to be her friend (not directly, no way!). After my directions for Myspace, he joined community this evening, added me as his first friend, and suppose will add her tomorrow. Where is the point? In the future posts you’ll more to know – not about person B and person C but on digital/analog and social online networks in practice. For now the only answer would be *****.
***** – person A, person B, person C => didn’t see each other for more than months, live approx. 20 minutes walk downtown area, and all are very busy, which doesn’t make any excuse for not seeing each other face to face.

Comments

  1. Very interesting. It makes sense to me in plenty of ways. Will go through ramification of this in the next few weeks!

  2. Danica says:

    Thank you Antonele, got notification.
    Will get to you and the issue you wrote very soon. This story is not finished, and exploring certain aspects of Social Networks is endless.
    best,
    danica

  3. Don Thieme says:

    Here I thought that computers should be making our lives simpler!

  4. Danica says:

    I agree with you Don!
    I will write in the future posts about this as situation is very critical and to think about it. It’s not only making, in normal resonable conditions when analogue is expected, communication complicated but also fuzzy and unclear which leads to misunderstandings. Or, au contraire, better understanding of the mechanism of zero’s and one’s/

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