Posted by The internet has robbed everyone of their social skills. That’s what they all say, right? They’re kinda right, but just not in the way they think.
The internet didn’t neuter our social skills. It repurposed them. I might even say it put them into overdrive.
Being anonymous is, obviously, the main thing that sets online apart from offline. And by anonymous it doesn’t just mean having your name and face concealed, it’s also the right to not be held accountable, the right to disengage, the ability to have your posts judged solely by their content and not by the identity of whoever posts them.
Your anonymity makes it easy to be an open book. It makes it easy to challenge people on their core beliefs. It’s tough to fight these urges. What you have now are incredibly raw discussions and disagreements between mostly-strangers that you’d typically see offline only between close buddies. Engaging takes no courage. Ignoring, even less so. Attention is never owed. It’s earned.
We’re no longer operating in an environment where everyone is, by default, deemed essential to the tribe’s survival. The “tribe,” so to speak, now only consists of members who are demonstrably essential to its survival.
You know where else to find a similar setup? Elementary school through middle school. Class sizes are usually big enough for everyone to be anonymous to each other. Kids aren’t old enough to be tainted by whatever systemic bigotry is prevalent in the outside society. In this respect, online communities can be seen as an extension of the schoolyard. Sure, people fixate on more complicated, more advanced subject matters, but the social dynamic doesn’t change.
This is the kind of environment where my social expectations and impulses are honed in. What do you think happens when I take them with me offline?
Suddenly, you’re supposed to unabashedly bid for attention, otherwise be seen as weird or quiet, or both. (While being trained on the internet to expect most bids for attention to go embarrassingly unanswered.) Suddenly, you’re respected just by virtue of existing in a shared space. You’re even expected to do so for everyone else. (While knowing that online, merely being in a shared space with someone brings you as close to them as a ghost from another era.)
That’s not to say the way we develop social skills online is wrong. I’m far from implying that. I’ve been speaking in hyperboles for most of this monologue, and yes, most of the same rules that work offline also apply online. It just so happens that online communities have shown me you can get so, so much from friendships. The friends you make online aren’t circumstantial. They’re forged in fire. I don’t think I’ve seen this level of dynamism between friends offline nearly as often.
If anything, this has made me second-guess the friendliness I see so often in offline settings. Behind every cheerful greeting I receive, every small-talk I indulge in, every joke I make and (forced) laughter I receive, every ounce of attention bestowed upon me, I see the obsolete forces of social etiquette at work. Online communities have more than proved that a space can thrive without such etiquette. It’s a bit like exiting the matrix and seeing the world for what it really is. Can you still enjoy it for what it is? Absolutely. But, as poor-sounding an analogy as it is, we are all larping as “grown-ups” offline while the internet takes us back to the freedom of the schoolyard where the stakes, the rewards, and mental calculus involved are unmatched. There’s a reason why you make your closest friends while in school, and not during your employment in a tampered-down offline world. In this day and age, you would have probably met your closest friends in school or on the internet.
If the offline world is going to change at all, it’ll only change to better match the online world. This might benefit some, it might hurt others. Getting it right is hard. If you think social skills are hard to come by today, just wait till the offline environment becomes more online-like. We were all kids once. We just learned to be more accommodating as we grew up. Now, thanks to the internet, a good number of us never saw the need to do so.
Anyway, why am I ranting about this again? Right. I’m probably not writing this to educate anyone. Anyone who’s reading this can probably piece together the dichotomy of online and offline by themselves. I’m here to remind whomever it concerns that there are winners and losers. I know because I am a loser.
The internet is a space where attention is scarce, and when attention is scarce, clout is everything. (I told you, this is school all over again.) Being a loser isn’t as bad as it sounds. Your anonymity does protect you. The most you have to lose is everything you could have gained – whether it’s friendship, clout, or simply a place to invest your own attention – but didn’t.
The potential for finding your place and having a blast is there. And it won’t go away. It’s here to stay.
Anyway, look forward to my next game.
@ me here.