Social Week: A balance of the interaction face to face
I will not dwell on details, but I’m going to focus on the perceptions and conclusions that I’ve made.
Saturday: Service Design Talk — Aperitivo — I met Enrico, a guy from my hometown that I knew him before by Whatsapp. I have had contact with him in a digital way, but I think that it’s always good to meet people personally because sometimes we make a wrong image of them.
Sunday: Museum — Wine week — I thought that a Museum would be a nice place to meet someone, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t interact with people, they were pretty focused in the exhibition, and also the place was super quiet. After that I decided to go to the wine week event. A walk-tasting is always a good way to break the ice, so I started to talk with a guy. He works in a wine shop here in Milano, so that is why he was there with other two friends.
Monday: Meeting people at Uni. I joined a group that was smoking at the stairs outside the building. The first approach was weird, but then I had a nice conversation with them. During the evening when I was walking back home, I get into a bakery close to my place and I started to talk (in my super bad italian) with the selling woman. She was super kind and shared with me the history of the bakery, that was founded by her family in 1935.
Tuesday: meeting people in the class (new interactions with the ux — group).
Wednesday: I need to meet people: This is a challenge, I’m not a freak!. I approached two girls that were using their phones without any interaction between them. I had to tell them that I was doing a challenge. It was super weird. After my “introductory explanation” I asked them their names and tried to keep a conversation. I didn’t feel well after that, many judgment thoughts about myself started to come out. I wasn’t enjoying that.
Thursday: Don’t talk with me! I don’t want to meet anyone today! I was in that day when you don’t feel good to interact with people. I was kind of “fobic” with relationships. So I decided not to relate.
Friday: It doesn’t make sense. What do I have to do exactly? What is the purpose of this? Did I choose a good challenge? Will I get important data with this? All of this questions came to my mind these last few days. I don’t feel motivated as I was at the beginning. But I met someone today, at the metro. He asked me about a location which I didn’t know, but I tried to help him using google maps. He is from Nebraska, USA, and he is in Milano because of his job. We kept the conversation until I had to leave the metro station.
…so…
To meet new people everyday is not an easy task. We take for granted that we live in a society in which we are able to “access” to people wherever we want. And that is something that social media made us to believe. Actually, is not like that. People are there but they are not available for us. We are social human beings but it is still hard to break the barrier between the unknown people. Nowadays, is not common to talk with random people at the metro station, to start a conversation in the supermarket, or to make friends at the park. If you do that, they are going to think that you are a freak, a stalker, or that you want to take some advantage of them. On the other hand, it is a fact that meeting and interacting with people requires certain amount of energy and we need to be “open” in order to relate with them. You have to be friendly, welcoming and try to make them feel comfortable during the talk. Sometimes we don’t have that energy, we don’t feel open and we prefer to stay quiet and introvert.
That is exactly how I felt the last few days. I started the challenge very motivated, but this motivation was decreasing and one day I didn’t want to interact with anyone. In conclusion, I think that this is something that I also needed to learn. We cannot socialize all the time, we need our space, we need to recover and renew our energy.
I read something that scared me alot: In the future, 70% of the people on the planet are going to have virtual relationships. What does it mean? It means that 70% of the population are going to lose their capability to relate with others, they are going to lose empathy and connection, and the most important part, they are going to lose the main characteristic of human beings: the sociability.
Is digital interaction better than face to face interaction? Is it more effective and easy going? Do you feel much more comfortable in digital conversations? May be the answer is yes, and that is why we prefer it. But personally I think that virtual relationships are lack of: emotions, reactions, conection, contact, perception, faster answers, approaches… Although personal interactions are not easy, it doesn’t mean that the digital ones are better. Between digital and personal relationships, I have always chosen the personal ones, because I consider that they are more valuable and long lasting. So my question is, why we still “prefer” the comfortable digital interactions? Because we are denying the possibility of opening ourselves to meet people in “real life”, in personal situations.
I hope that in the future we can return to the real and personal relationships.
I hope that in the future 70% of the people know the importance of the human relationships.
