Ugh, this is too real and bittersweet. Calls held by a shared history. Watching and not knowing how to share, but intimately wanting to experience everyones lives.
As someone who has been using online communication (voice/video) incessantly to keep up with friends around the world ever since it became available, I hear that sentiment a lot from people who only started doing it with the pandemic. Like oh geez I guess half my life (like 15 years) has been fake and I have no friends actually. Frickin' babies.
I get it somewhat though, the pandemic makes it all SO much more depressing, because you've been stuck indoors for ages except for short trips to get groceries, and sometimes you really do just wanna hang out in-person. Got my first dose of vaccine a couple weeks ago, so it won't be long now…
Video calls are great when they are 1:1, but at least for me they always seem to fall apart after you have more than 3 or 4 people on them. There's just no way to have side conversations, which is half the fun of large IRL meet-ups.
What's that quote? "I like large parties. They're so intimate." At large parties conversations can split apart and merge in wonderful ways. On zoom, you're all forced into only one single conversation. Add in the slight time delay of the internet and things tend to stay pretty surface level. At least that's been my experience this past year…
I've been doing internet communication since the mid nineties and have, by now, tried more or less every single platform. My experience is that the really oldskool was were the best: IRC and private forums where people could come and go at their own pace. Sure, we couldn't see or hear each other but it still reached a level of intimacy as today's hectic world cannot capture again. When it was more like writing letters, then people were more forced to make an effort to get their message through and were more inclined to try to understand. I still wouldn't trade away the option to actually see and hear my friends and loved ones but now everyone are multitasking and not actually really paying that much attention to the meeting. It is now more shallow and "for show" than to actually have a deeper connection. I guess it's partially the fault of (anti)social media where it's more important to appear like friends than to actually be friends.
Naturally, this does not apply to every conversation and not to every person, but I feel, by far, more disconnected nowadays than I've ever felt in the past.
6 thoughts on “#22”
Kogicon
Ugh, this is too real and bittersweet. Calls held by a shared history. Watching and not knowing how to share, but intimately wanting to experience everyones lives.
Carl
As someone who has been using online communication (voice/video) incessantly to keep up with friends around the world ever since it became available, I hear that sentiment a lot from people who only started doing it with the pandemic. Like oh geez I guess half my life (like 15 years) has been fake and I have no friends actually. Frickin' babies.
I get it somewhat though, the pandemic makes it all SO much more depressing, because you've been stuck indoors for ages except for short trips to get groceries, and sometimes you really do just wanna hang out in-person. Got my first dose of vaccine a couple weeks ago, so it won't be long now…
Will
Video calls are great when they are 1:1, but at least for me they always seem to fall apart after you have more than 3 or 4 people on them. There's just no way to have side conversations, which is half the fun of large IRL meet-ups.
What's that quote? "I like large parties. They're so intimate." At large parties conversations can split apart and merge in wonderful ways. On zoom, you're all forced into only one single conversation. Add in the slight time delay of the internet and things tend to stay pretty surface level. At least that's been my experience this past year…
Notwill
I've been doing internet communication since the mid nineties and have, by now, tried more or less every single platform. My experience is that the really oldskool was were the best: IRC and private forums where people could come and go at their own pace. Sure, we couldn't see or hear each other but it still reached a level of intimacy as today's hectic world cannot capture again. When it was more like writing letters, then people were more forced to make an effort to get their message through and were more inclined to try to understand. I still wouldn't trade away the option to actually see and hear my friends and loved ones but now everyone are multitasking and not actually really paying that much attention to the meeting. It is now more shallow and "for show" than to actually have a deeper connection. I guess it's partially the fault of (anti)social media where it's more important to appear like friends than to actually be friends.
Naturally, this does not apply to every conversation and not to every person, but I feel, by far, more disconnected nowadays than I've ever felt in the past.
Pylgrim
You get exactly as much as you put in Hannah, and that's fine. The problem is believing that everybody else is experiencing the same.
jeybork
I love the call back to Hanna's first appearance, where she was also clippin' toenails