Robert Scoble, guru for Rackspace and a very well known personality in the social media world, wrote a post recently that sparked a very interesting and important conversation. The post was titled, “A Former Friend Blocked Me: What I Learned About Myself.” Apparently a person whom Scoble was friends with offline blocked him throughout all of the online platforms they shared. In Scoble’s mind, this was a “nuclear option.” Even though he had a phone number for the person in question he refused to take the issue to a phonecall. A block is the end of the story. Full stop.
The comments on the post reveal that there is a lot of ambiguity about how we relate to people in the online world. There are several different variances in terms of how we connect with people. My online world consists of all of the following:
• People I have known since nursery school
• High school friends
• College friends
• Grad School friends
• Work friends
• People I enjoy interacting with but have never met in “real life”
Social Media platforms generally entice us to interact with all of these different groups of people at the same time and in the same way. True, you can create Twitter lists, Facebook filters, Google Plus circles, and more, but let’s be honest – posting what you want and interacting with people how you want is more fun when you can be a little off the cuff and spontaneous. That is part of the joy of the online world, at least in my experience.
What Scoble’s post highlights, however, is that the online world tends to make things more convoluted, not more clear. Sometimes interacting with a “real life” friend online can reveal things about them that you never would have noticed otherwise. Perhaps their religious or political posts really rub you the wrong way on a regular basis. Maybe they complain a lot more online than they do in the offline world. Should the online world have the power to impact a relationship that has existed for years (or decades) in the offline world?
At the same time, social media begs us to answer questions we may not otherwise have pondered. How do you define true friendship? Is it a question of chatting on threads all day? Are those friends, buddies, acquaintances, connections, network members, or something else? Is there a difference between friendships with people you interact with offline and online? Are people with whom you talk on the phone on a higher level of hierarchy than those whom you only speak to online? What are the ramifications of these definitions?
Things get even more complex when you realize that everyone answers all of these questions differently based on their own unique personal experiences and preferences. I learned this last year. I shrunk my Facebook community rather considerably. I wanted to simplify some of these questions, and I felt that “unfriending” people who I did not interact with very often would be no big deal. If you aren’t commenting on someone’s posts and they aren’t commenting on yours, and if you aren’t otherwise engaging with each other, what harm could there be? As it turned out, many many people were deeply hurt and offended by my actions. I never expected the kind of blowback I received. Perhaps I should have.
Many different online personalities/business consultants are admonishing companies to focus on relationships, particularly on social media platforms. Would any two companies define that in the same way?
We as a society have a lot of collective soul searching to do.
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An Online Relationship By Any Other Name
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