I went out to dinner and a show with a friend the other day, enjoying some pizza and then wandering over to watch a mediocre blues/country/folk band. This friend was my first roommate from when I first moved out at 19. He lamented that being in his fifties, it was harder to develop new friendships.
Around those formative years of my early teens, I moved around quite a bit, from Calgary, to Toronto, to Ottawa. In under two years, I went to four different schools, needing to make new friends each time. It’s not easy being an awkward 13 year old, trying to fit in.
Perhaps trying to make friends can be difficult at any age.
For me, technology has always been a fruitful avenue for connection for much of my adult life. That roommate? I met him on a BBS. Many of the friends I’ve since met have been through technical avenues like work, conferences, and blogging.
Blogging throughout the aughts connected us to others around the world as we shared what we learned through our creative endeavours. Those connections led to employment, career advancement, and friendship.
As we rolled into the 2010s, much of that community had moved to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I say moved because while our sites may have continued to exist, the conversations were no longer happening there. We were blogging less and tweeting more. (E.g. in 2013, I only wrote two blog posts.)
In my head, I have associated social media to a form of advertising. They are a way of continuing to stay top of mind in each other’s lives. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as they say. [Perhaps that feels icky to hear. Nobody likes to be reduced to or thought of as advertising.] The connection isn’t formed by having an account. It’s not even in the follows. It’s the conversations that happen. Social media makes it easier because it allows for social (and parasocial) relationships to develop due to semi-regular volleys back and forth—like a public chatroom.
It’s been frustrating to see these platforms shift away from connecting people and optimize for an algorithm that puts random content in front of me. With the recent transition away from social media—by others and myself—I’ve wondered how to keep those connections and form new ones.
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I’ve realized that in simplifying this blog, I’ve made it harder to create and maintain connections. No comments means it is harder for people to quickly respond to a topic. Sending an email creates enough friction that many people avoid doing it. People don’t necessarily want a one-on-one conversation with someone they’ve never met. It also privatizes the conversation preventing others from joining in. No analytics or webmentions means that I don’t see when other people are responding to me, making it harder for me to reply in kind. No webrings or blog rolls makes it harder for people to discover other people. That hyperlink was and is a foundational part of the web and I’ve not taken advantage of one of the best tools to promote connectivity in this medium.
The simplicity I have created to maintain this blog has made it more difficult to maintain connectivity in the world.
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Is this blog about more than just being a loudmouth, voicing my own thoughts, stories, and opinions into a vacuum? Should I be doing more to build connections? And to be clear, these connections aren’t just for me; they are for you, too. You might find a new site to follow and eventually a new friend because of those links.
Knowing me, I’ll end up somewhere in the middle. I’m not starting a revolution or a movement. I’m not looking to raise my pitchfork and ensure everybody has a blog. There are easier things that can be done, though. I can spin out more tendrils, more links, more connections to others.
It’s about consideration—not in some attempt to recreate a nostalgic past that has been lost. It’s about consideration in how we curate and connect. There are many amazing people, a few of whom I’m grateful to call friends, and this blog (and yours, and others) is one of the ways in which we can build and maintain a space that feels genuine, authentic, and connecting.
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