On broadcasting
In the pre-COVID world, I used to ride the bus to work. One encounter has stayed with me for more than four years.
A woman stumbled on at one of the stops downtown. Pushing her way through the crowd of passengers, she plopped down in a middle seat, sitting directly across from me.
"I finally got a job today," she told everyone and no one. "So I don't have to worry about that anymore."
She wasn't looking at anyone in particular. She spoke outwardly and indirectly to… whoever. Staggering in her seat, she began to look around as the bus rolled forward. We (i.e., everyone within earshot) acknowledged that someone was announcing something. Passengers looked up, glanced at her, readjusted their headphones, then returned to their phones.
"Isn't anyone happy for me?"
We continued to scroll, poring over our chosen apps, where strangers tell audiences of thousands the most intimate details about their personal lives.
Social conventions, like addressing the audience directly, make sense online, within our virtual realities — but those same conventions are strange and intolerable in the real world. Broadcasting a message works on Instagram, or on TV, or when you’re giving a speech at a symposium where participants sign up to hear what you have to say.
The way that we speak to each other in person is different from how we speak to each other online. That’s obvious enough. But we could also say that the language of the internet has ulterior motives. For example, take the phrase, "Maybe it's just me."
I find myself saying “maybe it’s just me” all the time. But any feeling I've ever felt has been felt by thousands of someone elses before. That's why our list of words to describe emotions is finite, and we have even fewer physical feelings in the body to choose from. The heart either sinks or races. The stomach is in knots or fluttering. The throat chokes up. Thoughts are incessant, or the mind is empty.
If a friend says to you, in private — "Maybe it's just me, but I'm feeling lonely", they expect an authentic response. A response of, “No, of course it's not just you, I feel that way, too, and we aren't the only ones who feel that way, and it’s more universal than any of us realize, and I’m so glad we’re friends, and I’m always here for you if you need me”, and then you hug, and you share a moment, and you strengthen your friendship.
But when a TikTok influencer says, “Maybe it’s just me, but…”, they expect a flood of one-way responses in the comments section. And the commenters, too, expect responses (or retorts), validating (or opposing) their own thoughts with additional replies or an ever-increasing like count, becoming a part of the conversation in their own way, trying to attract more attention, to grow their follower count — to do or gain or get something out of the transaction.
What if we approached online conversations more like real-life ones? Group chats are the new social media, in part because they’re the only platform we have that’s retained the “social” part. What if we brought a level of intimacy to the internet that feels new and uncomfortable? If the tools we used moved away from broadcasting and instead toward bridging and constructing?
I think a subtle shift is starting. So allow me to broadcast this, but also tell you, as a friend: it’s never just you.
