I am now back from the Online Research conference in Leipzig – where I spent the time learning, schmoozing, and sipping sparkling water and/or beer while chatting with Internet geeks while using hip online lingo like “avatar” and “MUDD.”
I’ve gotten to the point that staying at a hotel seems just as cold and meaningless as putting my head in a freezer, and was eager to Couchsurf with a 30-something Leipzig lass and her 7-year-old son. She just got back from Cambodia and sadly had caught some sort of bladder infection. Lacking will in her heart to cancel my ‘reservation’ in the last minute, she welcomed me in with open arms. And as you may guess, our interaction was limited, yet still had this intimate quality to it. The discussions we had were truthful and honest, yet it was more her environment which made me feel so in-tune with who she was as a person. Her apartment had a funny, slightly cluttered, multicoloured, hippie-with-child aesthetic to it. I slept on the lower half of a bunk bed in a room full of toys and games and two turtles staring out at me from the world of their aquarium. And in the first 15 minutes of knowing my host, she confided in me, saying: “My private sphere has all sots of emotions attached to it. And when I share that space with someone, it just feels more natural to be emotional and honest, and have an honest discussion. Outside, we have small chat. And small talk is not me, it’s not about me. It’s about nothing. But this discussion is so anonymous because the surroundings, too, are anonymous.”
The Internet, despite being fairy anonymous, when one stays online, its able to bring people together into very personal spaces. If the individual stays online, then the discussions can be personal, even deeply personal, but there is still strong anonymity in being so personal. Thus, the Internet is not like the offline world. Online, people can blurt out whatever they want but the actual person behind that speech is anonymous. The all-sensory experience of meeting face-to-face is lost.
Within the urban environment, most of us meet at least a few new people per week. Whether it’s just the granny selling sausage, who we stand and chat with for 10 minutes longer than usual, or the random email we get from a friend-of-a-friend. Each situation brings with it various levels of potential stranger-to-stranger intimacy. These are contingent of time spent with the person, the type of environment, and the motivation of both individuals. Think of the last time you had a really close discussion with a stranger. For most of you, I bet it wasn’t in the city center, on your way back from work. Why is it that in some situations we become close to people, and in others we can’t at all? Intimacy between strangers is like a fine recipe which needs the exact ingredients to work. It’s extremely difficult to strike up a worthwhile conversation between strangers in certain situation. For example, low potential intimacy is usually found among strangers meeting in an urban public sphere. Medium intimacy, can be found between strangers meeting online and keeping that discourse online. And the highest level of potential intimacy – could be between strangers meeting in a private space, strangers meeting while mobile, out of their context of the own locality.
This is just me hypothesizing and I have no idea if this is true. But being somebody who dreams of the day that the word “stranger” is erased from the dictionary, I have struck up many conversations with those less familiar people standing across from me. And perhaps my hypotheses are true. And if you aren’t buying it, go out, meet some people, and come back to me with a revised theory of your own.
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