Yin and Yang Online...

So, as anyone who reads this or any other blog is, in fact, part of the online community, today seems especially apropos to discuss the ups and downs of social networking. This week has been particularly instructive for me...

It all began several months ago when I encountered through a friend's Facebook thread a woman who seemed relatively insightful and compassionate, an ardent self-proclaimed Christian, yet one who seemed to manage to extract Jesus' true message from her reading of the Bible. While she didn't seem as dogmatically liberal as most of my political cohort, she was vehemently opposed to the approach and message of hate-spewing, vitriolic right-wing fundamentalist so-called Christians, and I am always fascinated by people willing to break out of traditional molds. After dialoguing with her for some time, through Facebook, email, and a few phone visits, I came to realize that she was a pretty troubled individual with a painful past and present, and that she was putting a bit too much of herself into her online relationship with me, and to my extended online community to which I'd introduced her. Additionally, before I fully realized what I was dealing with, I'd inappropriately shared with her far too much intensely personal information about myself and my family - a slip that would prove costly.

Without going into painful and excruciating detail, something as yet unknown set my FB "friend" off last week that, in an incredibly brief period of time, turned into the meanest and most vitriolic online attack and battle that I have ever personally witnessed or been involved with. The end result was a slew of pointed, hate-filled warfare, de-friending, blocking, etc. that proved very draining and hurtful for many parties, myself and my family among them...

When I told my therapist some time back about my online activity, she pronounced that Facebook and social networking were evil, that she didn't believe anything good could come of it, that it allowed people to create false impressions of relationships as substitutes for real relationships, and that her professional experience had convinced her that there was nothing healthy to be had in this arena.

I will be sharing this experience with my shrink at our next session, and asking her if there is any quick and easy way to recognize a malignant narcissist through either online or direct communication. I am generally considered a good judge of character, but, having failed so miserably in this instance, I hope she says yes and shows me the way. I'd just as soon not relive this experience in either the virtual or real world any time soon...

On the flip side, last night my mate and I joined more than a dozen "friends" whom we'd "met" at various times over the past year or so through Facebook - the vast majority of whom had never met or even spoken to any of the others in the real world. While most but not all were local, living as we do in a metropolitan area of more than 5 million people I am quite confident that, while we might have occasion to be in the same general area, perhaps even at the same venue at some point, there is very little likelihood we would have ever actually spoken to one another, come to realize our commonalities, and thus made the conscious effort to step out of the online world and into the real world to bring our "friendships" into the sort of full realization that is difficult nigh unto impossible online.

Notwithstanding the rather frenzied last minute effort required to change venues of our event to avoid the possibility of the aforementioned psychobitch showing up with her chrome plated Taurus .38 (yes, there really should be a law, but this is Texas, after all) to spoil our fun, the night went off without a hitch. We enjoyed a wonderful evening of meeting and getting to know - yes, really know, new friends. We enjoyed good food and drink, humor, laughter, music - all the sorts of human interaction that can't really be experienced through network apps, but that also wouldn't have been possible were it not for this strange new medium of online interaction that previous generations never had.

The moral I'm taking away from the story? Just as in every other aspect of our lives, there is indeed a yin and yang online. It is as unavoidable as the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the crests and troughs of the ocean's waves. Social networking, like anything else, can have its positives and negatives, and is thus inherently neither good nor evil. Anything which becomes an obsession, of course, will in the end have a damaging effect; be it a real or imagined friendship, a hobby or pastime, politics or religion. I would argue that there is no substitute for face-to-face human interaction, but equally that, on a planet of 7 billion souls, most of whom we'll never meet and which includes some very interesting critters, that the opportunity to interact with a much broader array of humanity, to learn about diverse people and cultures and philosophies and psychologies, is incredibly expanded by the online world. This is not an opportunity that I would willingly forego, but one which should be approached with eyes wide open...

And, as in all things except love for our fellow beings, moderation is a virtue.

Namaste