Earlier this evening I wrote a somewhat abrasive comment about Tumblr exercising their right to slash and burn the “Missing E” browser extension from their infrastructure.
I received an interesting comment via Disqus - a comment that most of those who follow me will not have seen due to the hilariously disjointed and dysfunctional nature of Tumblr;
If you use Tumblr as social network, leaving it would be leaving friends. Because getting all of them to move is too hard. And managing two places is too annoying for me.
At first I agreed with the comment, but the more I thought about it, the more wrong I realised it was. Here’s the thing;
Friendships do not rely on social networks Most of the people you “know” through social networks are notyour friends Social networks are a communication medium - often purely an introduction medium, and all too often an obstacle to friendship.
If I leave Tumblr tomorrow (which could happen), I can count on one hand the people who would seek me out. I can also count on one hand the people who I have forged a real world relationship with outside the confines of the “social network” in which we met.
Some examples;
Back in the MySpace days I got talking to a woman in Oklahoma about books we were both reading. Very quickly the conversation left MySpace, and went to email, then Skype, and eventually she came to stay with us for a while. We will know each other through one way or another for the rest of our lives. The decline of MySpace had no bearing on us. One day several years ago while looking at photos on Flickr I saw a photo of the beach down the road from my parents house. I followed the link through to the photographer, and sent her a message. She is now my best real world friend. She has stayed with us, we have been out on countless adventures together, our kids get on like a house on fire… again, we will be friends for the rest of our lives regardless of howwe stay in touch. A couple of years ago I offered to help the author of a blog I read regularly in Texas do a makeover of her website. We got talking while working on it, and forged a fantastic friendship that very quickly left the world of blogging. We have emailed back and forth for years now,and again, built a friendship that has nothing to do with any online platform.
What am I trying to say here?
The internet isa very powerful tool - a wonderful communication medium - but that’s allit is. The relationship is between us- the people at each end of the piece of string with cans tied to the ends. It’s up to us to reach out and make friends with people. If we worry that without the string, our friends will forget us then they were never really friends to begin with.
And therein lies my resolution for the next year - to reach out more - both to new friends, and to old friends that I have neglected for far too long.