What are “friends” on the Internet and why should they be replaced with real friends?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The average number of our close friends, which we call, is rapidly declining, and it has dropped especially dramatically over the past 20 years. Why?

Scientists call this the “nude photo test,” and the essence of this test is this: suppose there is a photograph of you doing nude something that could shame you and your entire family for many generations: for example, bestiality. Ask yourself, how many people you know you can trust with this photo? If you are the same as the rest of us, then, probably, you have a maximum of two such people.

Even more disheartening is the fact that according to the research results, practically one in four has no one to whom he could entrust this.

1. Our life lacks annoying strangers

And this is not sarcasm. We develop tolerance to irritation, like to alcohol or an unpleasant odor.

The more opportunities we have to "cut" irritation from our lives, the less we are able to cope with it.

The problem is that technology has helped us build a cool, sprawling web designed only so that we can avoid annoying people. Shop for Christmas gifts online without having to face a fat lady pushing her basket right at you at Target Department Store. Spend $ 5,000 on a home theater system so you can watch movies on the big screen without any kid kicking your seat in the back. Or just rent a DVD from Netflix and you don't even have to spend those 30 seconds with the embarrassed kid working at the Blockbuster rental.

Hanging in line to see a doctor? We will never have a conversation with that smelly old man in the next seat. We'll stick an iPod in our ears and chat with a buddy, or play a game. Let's filter out all these annoying factors from our world.

Technology helped us build cool, sprawling a network designed only so that we can avoid annoying people.

It would be great if you could completely eliminate all this annoying crap from your life. But this is unreal. And it will never be possible.

As long as you have some needs, you will sometimes have to deal with people you hate. We are losing this ability that helped us deal with strangers and their annoying voices, awkward sense of humor, bad smells and squeaky shoes. Therefore, from those casual contacts with the outside world - a world that you cannot control, you want to scream and start hitting everyone in the crotch.

2. And annoying friends are not enough either

Many of us were born in cities filled with people we can't stand. When you were young, you might find yourself in an elementary school class filled with a couple dozen other kids you didn't choose and who didn't share your tastes and interests. Maybe you were beaten a lot.

But you have grown. And if you, let's say, are a big fan of DragonForce, you can go to their forum and meet a dozen people just like you. Or even better - start a closed room for communication and stay in it only with a select few.

Say goodbye to the tedious, awkward and frustrating process of interacting with someone who is completely different from you. This is another inconvenience of the Old World, like washing clothes in a stream, or waiting for a raccoon to walk by your street closet to wipe its ass.

The problem is that peaceful communication with incompatible people is very important for life in society. In fact, if you think about it, then peaceful communication with people whom you cannot stand is society. Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities who share living space and interact with each other, often through gritted teeth.

Fifty years ago, to watch a movie, you had to sit in a crowded room. There was no choice, you either watched or missed the show. When you bought a new car, all the residents of the block came to see it. You could bet there were assholes among them.

But, in general, people used to be more satisfied with their jobs and more satisfied with their lives … Also, they had more friends.

And so it was. Despite the fact that they had almost no opportunity to filter out their social circle (it often happened that someone who just lived next door became your friend), they still had more close friends - people they could trust than we have today.

Apparently, it turns out that after you cope with the first irritation and throw off your shell of superiority: “they listen to other music, because they will not understand mine,” then there is a certain satisfaction that you need other people, and they need you at a level that transcends common interests.

It turns out that people are social animals after all. And it is the ability to tolerate fools and endure irritation that is the quality that allows you to function in a world inhabited by other people who are not you. Otherwise, you will turn into emo. Science has proven it.

3. Text is a crappy way to communicate

I have a friend who uses the expression "No thanks" with a sarcastic connotation. It means "Better have a shot in the face." He utters the last word with a slight ironic tinge, by which its true meaning becomes clear. You ask, "Would you like to go to a new movie with Rob Schneider?" And he replies: "No thanks." So, one day we exchanged the following text messages:

Me: "Would you like me to bring the leftover chili I made?"

He: "No thanks"

It pissed me off. I am proud of my chili. It takes me a few days to cook it. I grind dried peppers myself, and special veal is not cheap. Does he reject my offer with his usual phrase?

I haven't spoken to him for six months. He sent me a letter, and without reading it, I sent it back, having sealed a dead rat inside. As a result, my wife met him by chance on the street and found out that it was his "No, thank you" that is what meant: "No, but thanks for the offer." It turns out he had no room in the fridge.

40% of what you write in your letter will be misunderstood.

Do you need to do any research to find out that 40% of what you write in your letter will be misunderstood? However, such a study has been carried out. How many friends do you have with whom you only communicate over the Internet? If 40% of your personality is lost in the text, can you say that these people actually know you? People who don't like you through text on forums, chat rooms, etc. Is this because you are truly incompatible? Or because of these misunderstood 40%? What about those who like you?

Many are trying to make up for this difference in pure numbers, collecting dozens of friends on MySpace. But there is another problem here …

4. Internet friends make us even more lonely

When someone speaks to you face to face, how much of the meaning of what they want to say is in the words alone, excluding body language and intonation? Guess.

Seven percent. The remaining ninety-three percent are non-verbal, according to the researchers. I don’t know how they got such an exact number, using a computer or something else. But we don't need to know that. Think for yourself, our humor is mainly sarcasm, and sarcasm is highlighting words with inappropriate intonation. Like my friend's "No Thanks".

This is the main problem. The human ability to absorb the mood of others through this subconscious osmosis is of great importance. Children born without this skill are considered mentally disabled. People who have a lot of this are called "charismatic" and they become movie stars and politicians. It’s not about what they say, but about the energy they give off and which makes us feel good.

You don't expect a girl to say that she likes you. This is evidenced by the sparkle in her eyes, her posture, the way she grabs you by the head and pokes her face into her tits.

When we live in the world of text, then all this disappears. And to this is added a strange side effect: without feeling the mood of the other person, we pass every line through our own mood. The reason I took my friend's message about chili as sarcasm was because I myself was in an irritated mood. In this state of mind, I myself wanted to be offended. Even worse, if I spend enough time communicating in this way, my mood will never change. People say hurtful things to me! Of course I'm upset! The whole world is against me!

At this moment, I need someone to shake me by the shoulders and bring me out of this state, and this leads us to number 5 …

5. We get little criticism

The worst thing about not having close friends is not missing birthdays or ping-pong alone with the wall, but the lack of real criticism.

For all the time that I have spent on the Internet, I have been called "fagot" ≈104, 165 times. I keep a table in Excel. I was also called "freak" and the like. (below are listed several swear words, approx. per.).

And none of this mattered, because all these people did not know me well so that their words could hit the target. I was often insulted and very rarely criticized. These concepts should not be confused. An insult is simply a noise made by someone who hates you to indicate their hatred. Barking dog.

Criticism is when someone tries to help you by telling you things about you that you would be more comfortable not to know.

Sadly, there are a whole bunch of people out there who never have this kind of conversation. All these interferences, the hard truth, the "you know, everyone is angry about what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they are afraid of you." These are creepy, awkward, uncomfortable conversations that you can only have with someone who sees right through you.

Email and other text messages are very good at avoiding this level of honesty. You can answer when you're in the mood. You can weigh the words. You can choose which questions to answer. The person on the other end won't see your face, won't notice how nervous you are, won't understand when you're lying. You are in complete control of everything, and as a result - that other person does not see anything beyond your armor. And he will never see you in your worst form, will not recognize these embarrassing little things that you cannot control. Gone are all the ridicule, humiliation and vulnerability on which true friendship is built.

Flip through the MySpace pages, see what they make of themselves. If you have created a group of friends through a blog, posing as a misunderstood and mysterious Lord of the Night, then it will be quite difficult to talk to them about how you went to the disco and you got diarrhea on the dance floor. You won't be yourself, which is a very lonely feeling.

And all this is crowned with the fact that …

6. We are all victims of the public outrage machine

Many who read this far will say, “Of course I'm upset! People are dying of hunger. America has become Nazi Germany! My parents watch moronic TV shows and then talk about them for hours. All over the world people are dying in senseless wars!"

But how did it happen that our worldview became more negative than the worldview of our parents? Or grandparents? Previously, people lived less, and children died more often. There were more diseases. If your friend moved, then the only way to communicate with him was with pen and paper. We have Iraq, but our parents were Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people), and their parents had World War II (which killed 1000 times more people).

Some of your grandparents grew up in a time when there was no air conditioning. And their parents all grew up without air conditioning. In a physical sense, today we live better in every possible way, but you will not recognize this if you read the news on the Internet. Why?

Ask yourself: if an article titled "Fall Out Boy is a great band" appears on some music site, another article titled "Fall Out Boy is the funniest band in the last hundred years, experts say" will appear on the same day. Which one do you think will get the most traffic? The second will get ahead by a huge margin. Cases of indignation of calm give rise to word of mouth.

How many of you read news blogs? The people leading them know this too. All sites are in a tough battle for traffic (even if they don't advertise, they still measure their success by their audience size), and so they cautiously wade through the wires looking for the most exciting story they can find. Other blogs are beginning to echo the same story from the same perspective. If you want, you can swim all day without getting out of the warm, stagnant water of the pool called "They're all evil bastards."

Only in such a climate could these stupid 9/9 conspiracy theories (which claim that the towers were blown up by the Bush administration and the New York City Fire Department, and the planes were actually holograms) could have originated. You listen to them, so every opposing politician is Hitler, and every election is a fucking apocalypse. And all because it forces you to read on.

There is no more "mass media" as such, when, as before, we could disagree with each other, because we saw the same news, but interpreted them differently, today we do not agree because we see completely different news.

In the old days, there was no such problem. Some people remember when there were only three channels on Television. Exactly - three. It's about the 80s. Therefore, there was something common in the way we all sat down and watched the same news from the same point of view. Even if it was a moronic and incorrect point of view, even if some events were hidden with criminal intent, at least we all knew the same thing.

Everything is over. There is no more "mass media" as such, when, as before, we could disagree with each other, because we saw the same news, but interpreted them differently, today we do not agree because we see completely different news. And when we cannot come to an agreement even on basic facts, the differences between us become incompatible. This constant feeling of being different from the rest of the world creates tension that only grows and grows.

We humans used to have many natural ways to release this fear. But today…

7. We feel useless because we are actually useless

Online friends have one advantage that no one ever talks about: They demand less.

Of course, you support them emotionally, calm them down after a falling out, maybe even dissuade them from committing suicide. But meeting someone in the meatspace adds a whole bunch of annoying demands. You waste your entire afternoon helping to fix your computer. Go to funerals with them. Give a lift every day in your car after the bank has seized their car for non-payment. They come to you unexpectedly, just as you are about to watch "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel, and start hinting that they are hungry until you give them half of your sandwich.

In a messaging program, on a forum, or in World of Warcraft, everything is much more controllable.

The problem is that evolution has hardwired into you the need to do things for other people. It seems that everyone has understood this for the last five hundred years, and then suddenly forgotten for several decades. Our teenagers contemplate suicide, and we try to teach them self-respect. Only now, unfortunately, self-respect and the ability to love yourself appear only after you have done something for which you can be loved. You can't fool yourself. If I think that guy named Todd is useless because he sits in his room all day drinking Pabst and playing video games, what would I think of myself if I did the same?

Want to break out of this pit of self-hatred? Get the black hair out of your eyes, step away from the computer, and buy some cool gift for someone you don't like. Send a postcard to your worst enemy. Prepare dinner for your parents. Or do something simple that has tangible results. Go scrub the leaves out of the downspout. Plant a damn plant.

There is nothing supernatural about this, you are a social animal, and therefore you were born with small hormones of happiness that are released into your bloodstream when you see the physical result of your actions. Think of all these teenagers in their dark rooms glued to their computers and turning every problem in life into a stupid melodrama. Why do they cut their hands? Because the infliction of pain - and the subsequent recovery - palpably gives them endorphins that they cannot get otherwise. It hurts, but it's real.

This stress relief through mild discomfort was part of our daily life, which we did through hunting gazelles, picking berries, climbing rocks and fighting bears. There is no more of this. This is why office work makes many people unhappy: we do not get a physical tangible result from work.

But try to work as a builder under the hot sun for a couple of months, and for the rest of your life, driving past this house, you will say: "Fuck, I built it." Maybe that's why mass shootings more often take place in offices, and not on construction sites.

This is such a physical satisfaction from the category of "dirt under the nails" that can be obtained only by turning off the computer, leaving the house, and reuniting with the real world. Nothing the Internet has to offer can replace this feeling of "This I built" or "This is I raised" or "I fed this guy" or "I made these pants."

Try to work as a builder under the hot sun for a couple of months, and for the rest of your life, driving past this house, you will say: "Fuck, I built it."

This text was published on the website cracked.com, and the translation was found by Vache Davtyan. Thanks to Alexander Kolb for the tip.