Friendship in the Age of Facebook

Now I am reduced down to just a face image and a sound bite without the sound.

It takes time to fall in love with friends, romantic or platonic. Face to face time. There is almost no way around it. I am meeting a new friend on Skype and so I at least have a face to look at. Still, it’s difficult with so much information missing. The heart and subtle mind need lots of ways to pick up reciprocity signals. Friendship is more than words. Friendship is the way your face lights up at a joke. Friendship is the movement of your hands as you make some point. Friendship is the pause to look at a cloud. It’s a grin while looking away and the quick wiping of a tear. Some friends say little, but feel much. Some friends quietly hold my arm as we walk.

I recently saw a video on the courtship dance of pigeons done by dancers. The pigeons kept an eye on each other’s dance and as each mimicked or creatively spinned off the other’s movements, the courtship went well. But when the researcher presented a fake pigeon in the form of a prerecorded female who did not reciprocate the male pigeon's movements, the courtship stymied, stuttered and stopped. The male was looking for attuned behavior. The girl's was clearly out of tune and the poor guy didn’t know what to do.

Human beings are doing a far more complicated dance. When chunks are missing such as physical contact, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, we are left with a small band of information.  Intellectually we may understand one another but our hearts aren’t talking at all.  Our bodies are mute.

I believe that the loss of heart and body contact leaves us feeling horribly lonely.

I saw an email from a woman asking what to do about her painful loneliness. I immediately asked her to tea, but she lives in Sante Fe. She lives in a city many states away, but she asks voiceless, bodiless,  strangers on the internet for help. What happened to seeing friends in her own city? I’ll tell you what happened.  They are all too busy to sit face to face. They pretend that they are getting social contact when they post a few lines on Facebook.