Zen Dixie
  • Home
    • About >
      • Contact Form
      • About Jas Faulkner
      • A (Sort of) Brief History of Zen Dixie
      • Legalese and All That Jas
  • Emily Dickinson Is Sick Of Your Shit
    • Plague Life >
      • We Closed The Door Behind Us
      • We Do Shakespeare With Tin Cans and String
      • We Get A New Tenant And Keep The Kid
      • We Go Into Quarantine
      • We Lose Our Patience
    • An Open Letter To Marcus' Mom
    • Are Doctors Getting Paychecks From Big Pharma?
    • I'll Take My Stand
    • Ray Chased The Rain Away
    • Smile For The Tennessee DMV
    • WWJD? Probably Not Create An MLM
    • Your Third Grader Does Not Need A Sports Bra
    • When God Wants Your Attention
  • Arty Stuff
    • My Marker Rant
  • Reviews
    • Books >
      • Links For Bookish Folk
      • Book Reviews >
        • Danny's Doodles
        • Review: The Life of Lou Reed: Notes from the Velvet Underground
    • Watch This! >
      • Watching Star Wars >
        • Watching Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
        • Watching Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
      • TCCO: The Grand Tour
  • The Front Page Blog

The Next Best Thing

12/12/2020

0 Comments

 
    I am working with a friend on a project she started about the difference between fully living in the world and having a simulacrum of life where people act more like audience members than actual participants. 

     Some of the people she and I talked to included clergy who held services on social media and virtual environment platforms pre-COVID, members of defunct online theatre games groups, and a theatre company that used avatars (!) and teachers who worked in online/virtual classrooms before the pandemic made this a necessity. 

     We talked about how our own lives had changed since being online for the past three decades made it almost too easy for shy folks and introverts to essentially hide. Yes, there was no small amount of self-assessment going on. There are probably a lot of people in our field who would prefer to not acknowledge that, but it happens. 

     There's no argument we can't have life as we knew it before the pandemic, at least for the time being. Things are changing. At some point in the near future I am going to be able to go out in the world again. So are a lot of other people who are clinging to some semblance of feeling like they're part of the human race by means of social media. 

     One priest who has worked with us quit doing virtual services because he felt it was at some level still playacting. The larger the groups got, the more it seemed like he was getting more expected responses than actual inquiry. 

     This hit home. 

     Another thing he brought up was the idea that more of us seem to be converging into groups of monologists and those who made up their audience. He told us his friends list had grown from a little over eighty people to just south of a thousand. 

     Another thing he shared was a conversation he had with his wife. She asked him how many on that list were people he could comfortably approach just to talk, to seek comfort from if they needed to do so, were people he felt comfortable about calling. 

     F. and I agreed it was a pretty brave line of inquiry and one that might lead to some uncomfortable answers. It is one I will be asking myself in the week ahead. 

     Years ago I sent a friend request to someone I had interacted with on a message board in the past. Her response was something to the effect that I was nuts if I thought she would want to be friends with me. For a long time, it made me very cautious about sending and accepting requests. Although I have to admit the "lonely guys just looking for love in all the wrong places" are still fun to mess with! I haven't had one in a while. They keep running away when I mention the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Internet Fraud Division. Pleh. Killjoys.

     F. and I were very honest with each other about how easy it has gotten to hide from the world. Kind if silly, really. After all, we're both part of the proud, the nearly unemployable, the ones with at best marginally marketable skills, the people with anthropology degrees. 

     Here are some of the thoughts we have about online "life."

1.) If people aren't responding to you, you're not in the right place.

2.) Assess your expectations. If you're getting what you need in the way of information in a passive environment, ie. online lectures, that's great. Keep it up. If anything, this experience should have given a lot of us the chance to broaden our knowledge base. 

3.) The following things might be a stopgap, but without inclusion and direct participation, they are pale imitations of the real thing. Moreover, they might actually exacerbate depressive tendencies. I'm thinking of: online religious observance, some kinds of creative collective groups, support groups... All of these are more dependent on the shared energy of people being with us than we realize until we lose that particular attribute. F. adds classroom dynamics have drastically changed as well. She says the whole concept of pedagogical presence has changed.

     Does this mean people should do away with ALL online interaction because in-person is better? No. We all have those Cheers-like places where you log in and everybody yells, "NORM!" If you don't reach a point where you feel like you may have found your people, why are you there? 

     I used to chalk these sorts of questions up to being spectrum-y and overthinking everything. Then F. started asking her students questions about this and asked me to work with her. From what we've asked people about life online before and life online after, it seem a lot of people are either settling in or asking if they are seeking friendship or accepting something that is actually very different. 

     There's so much I miss. I think other people miss these things, too. What worries me is if I get too comfortable accepting little or no interaction, it's going to make it harder to engage when the pandemic is under control. ​​
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About this blog...

    Someone asked about an essay I write for the front page some time ago. I'd always thought of the home page as something akin to a Buddha Board. Whatever I wrote for it was there as long as I needed it, and then it disappeared. Maybe I do need to save those pieces. At least for now, I'll put them here for anyone bored enough to read them.

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Copyright 2007 - 2020
Legal stuff to make you very sleepy (binaural beats not included.)

All original content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog and this blog owner is noted as author or source. DISCLAIMER This is a personal website for the owner of Zen Dixie. The content within it is intended for personal use. The views and opinions within this blog represent the owner. It does not represent the opinions and views of other people, institutions, or organizations the owner may be affiliated with individually or as a group unless stated explicitly.

And furthermore...
Zen Dixie is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Jas Faulkner. Any attempts to conduct business or procure money, credentials and other perks, or publish using this name by anyone other than the owner of this site, domain, and trademark will be dealt with swiftly and to the full extent that legal intervention allows.

Unless otherwise stated, the material published within this website and/or linked to this website is copyright of Zen Dixie and/or Jas Faulkner. No part may be reproduced in whole or in part without the specific written permission of Jas Faulkner (sole proprietor of Zen Dixie) first hand and obtained.