This month’s Media Safe 101 is about virtual friendliness. This whole business of participating in the virtual blogosphere* is rather confusing. What is so puzzling is how the behaviour and language codex of this community or society differs from the real world, or at least the world that I have lived in for the last forty-nine years.
How can I behave friendly towards someone who I have just met virtually without signalling that I consider that person a friend or that I am looking for a friend? That vast pool of knowledge we usually communicate through our senses (e.g. facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and verbal inflection) now is communicated through written words or an occasional photo. And this form of communication seems wrought with inadequacies and misinterpretation.
Most people seem to thrive and embrace the virtual communities (e.g. MySpace, Dodgeball and Facebook) because it offers them a form of social interaction they enjoy. I can only think that through this interaction they feel validated, recognised, acknowledged, or a sense of belonging. That is perhaps seeing the positive effects of this world. The negative effects run the gambit from ludicrous self-promotion to spewing vindictive verbal garbage into the blogosphere. For most people, fortunately, it is the former effects they seem to seek when writing or reading/commenting on blogs.
I have been reading/commenting on blogs for possibly a year-and-a-half or two years now. I have been writing blogs for nearly a year now. Not a long time, but in the world of blogging, not to be poopoohed. I had hoped, over time, that I would become less confused about my virtual persona and more assured of expressing myself. This isn’t so.
As those of you who know me, I have the sort of face people feel comfortable to approach, I “suggest” that I can be trusted with intimate details, and I can also be leaned upon in times of need. Yet, in the virtual world, I feel very handicapped when communicating to people I haven’t actually met in real life.
Yes, it is possible to get a sense of what they are like over a period of time, but I have no notion of how I come across. I cannot see how they react to my words or my questions or when I speak of personal observations. So much of normal conversation, or even the art of making and keeping friends, is a dance along the thin line between the abstract and the personal.
Recently, a blogger I read regularly asked her readers for some advice about how to do research for a book she is writing. I quickly sent her a strategy she could use and she reacted enthusiastically and asked whether it is possible to use my text in her blog. I agreed, but asked her to wait until I reworked the text before putting it in her blog.
Somewhere between the time I sent her the original text and the reworked text, her attitude towards the text or my person changed. She went from being enthusiastic and complementary to silently non-communicative. Since we do not know each other, there is no basis to inquire about this change in her attitude. I find her silence confusing for, in the real world, silence is often a form of rejection or disapproval.
Normally, we use all of our senses when talking to another person. A good friend of mine, who does coaching and management consulting, says that true communication has very little to do with the words you say and very much to do with voice and body and that ethereal “empathy” factor. So, where does that leave us in the virtual world?
Take away the words, you are left with writing style (for someone who has not actively participated in an English-speaking milieu for nearly twenty-five years a bit of a handicap), dispersing smilies (happy) and capital letters (shouting) in your communication, pauses between communication (does this signal accessibility?) and, last but not least, silences. All of these tools have to be learnt and I don’t know how to learn to use them. After nearly two years of participating in one form or another in the world of blogs and podcasts, I still feel like a country bumpkin at a slick city gala.
Does anyone know of a source that deals with this topic? What is acceptable behaviour when trying to be friendly but not friends? Are there guidelines that show you how to communicate how impassioned you are about your writing topic, without appearing fanatical or inflexibly pedantic? How can you walk the tightrope between personal and intimate? Do people even care about these things?
* Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. (Wikipedia)
How can I behave friendly towards someone who I have just met virtually without signalling that I consider that person a friend or that I am looking for a friend? That vast pool of knowledge we usually communicate through our senses (e.g. facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and verbal inflection) now is communicated through written words or an occasional photo. And this form of communication seems wrought with inadequacies and misinterpretation.
Most people seem to thrive and embrace the virtual communities (e.g. MySpace, Dodgeball and Facebook) because it offers them a form of social interaction they enjoy. I can only think that through this interaction they feel validated, recognised, acknowledged, or a sense of belonging. That is perhaps seeing the positive effects of this world. The negative effects run the gambit from ludicrous self-promotion to spewing vindictive verbal garbage into the blogosphere. For most people, fortunately, it is the former effects they seem to seek when writing or reading/commenting on blogs.
I have been reading/commenting on blogs for possibly a year-and-a-half or two years now. I have been writing blogs for nearly a year now. Not a long time, but in the world of blogging, not to be poopoohed. I had hoped, over time, that I would become less confused about my virtual persona and more assured of expressing myself. This isn’t so.
As those of you who know me, I have the sort of face people feel comfortable to approach, I “suggest” that I can be trusted with intimate details, and I can also be leaned upon in times of need. Yet, in the virtual world, I feel very handicapped when communicating to people I haven’t actually met in real life.
Yes, it is possible to get a sense of what they are like over a period of time, but I have no notion of how I come across. I cannot see how they react to my words or my questions or when I speak of personal observations. So much of normal conversation, or even the art of making and keeping friends, is a dance along the thin line between the abstract and the personal.
Recently, a blogger I read regularly asked her readers for some advice about how to do research for a book she is writing. I quickly sent her a strategy she could use and she reacted enthusiastically and asked whether it is possible to use my text in her blog. I agreed, but asked her to wait until I reworked the text before putting it in her blog.
Somewhere between the time I sent her the original text and the reworked text, her attitude towards the text or my person changed. She went from being enthusiastic and complementary to silently non-communicative. Since we do not know each other, there is no basis to inquire about this change in her attitude. I find her silence confusing for, in the real world, silence is often a form of rejection or disapproval.
Normally, we use all of our senses when talking to another person. A good friend of mine, who does coaching and management consulting, says that true communication has very little to do with the words you say and very much to do with voice and body and that ethereal “empathy” factor. So, where does that leave us in the virtual world?
Take away the words, you are left with writing style (for someone who has not actively participated in an English-speaking milieu for nearly twenty-five years a bit of a handicap), dispersing smilies (happy) and capital letters (shouting) in your communication, pauses between communication (does this signal accessibility?) and, last but not least, silences. All of these tools have to be learnt and I don’t know how to learn to use them. After nearly two years of participating in one form or another in the world of blogs and podcasts, I still feel like a country bumpkin at a slick city gala.
Does anyone know of a source that deals with this topic? What is acceptable behaviour when trying to be friendly but not friends? Are there guidelines that show you how to communicate how impassioned you are about your writing topic, without appearing fanatical or inflexibly pedantic? How can you walk the tightrope between personal and intimate? Do people even care about these things?
* Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. (Wikipedia)
lilalia 
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