That’s what my best friend now calls me.
Let’s stop and rewind. My best friend has a psychology degree from a local university. He loves to watch me interact with the world. He keeps saying something about being a great case study for a book he’ll write someday.
Tonight was the first time that we’ve had the chance to hang out since I got my first “internet-enabled smartphone”. Which pretty much equated to this is the first time that I would be interacting with Twitter while he was around. I really hadn’t given it a second thought since it was the same normal release of dry humor and bad jokes till we were checking out at Wal-Mart, where more than it should of our general interaction takes place. I had already been tweeting but decided to Twitpic a t-shirt I was buying. He found it facinating the amount of interaction I was getting on Twitter, while he was quite annoyed at the fact that I had deverted some, not all, of my attention from him.
In further conversations, which just wrapped up here at his place [5am-ish], he’s questioning social media interaction in reguards to etiquette. When is it a right or wrong time to use Twitter in a social setting? This is frankly an argument that I didn’t see coming from him. After, he’s my bro. I would have never seen him siding with the 40+ crowd. No offense to those of you reading this and are 40+. Probably not talking about you.
His argument is that he holds more value in the personal interaction and the information that comes from that interaction. My counter was that I value the information more than I do the interaction, to a point. That’s why I attend as many conferences/meeting/user groups related to the subject as possible. While I value the information greatly, I also have learned to value the relationships built from those interactions online and information exchanged.
And, as usual, his point hold more water that I would like for it to. If you’re reading this blog, than you are an outlier. Many of us also refer to it as living inside “The Bubble“. We’re ready to put information into hyperdrive. We value interactions online and information exchanged but often times we forget that the rest of the world is not quite there yet.
The majority of people out there still don’t want or need that constant interaction and information exchange. They haven’t grown up with the technology, they haven’t decided to learn or feel that they can’t learn, or they just don’t see the value in it. While most individuals may choose to stay away from this medium of information, businesses are being forced into it by, well, us. We are the vocal 5% who see the value of the medium to exchange information about companies. But that’s another post…
Point being, there’s no matter if you’re just sitting behind the computer or smartphone and being very “social”, people will see you as being “anti-social”. Even though you’re interaction with a wider spectrum of people and information, in their eyes, they just see the typing and no interpersonal interaction. It’s a hard concept to relearn and it helps to have a friend who can, gently, bring you out of your shoes and see it from a different perspective.
Thanks Jamie. I owe you one.
